


Domestic

by tehkittykat



Category: Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Legacy (2010), Tron: The Next Day (2011)
Genre: F/M, GFY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2017-12-10 08:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 38,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/783891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tehkittykat/pseuds/tehkittykat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The domestic man, who loves no music so well as his kitchen clock, and the airs which the logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, has solaces which others never dream of.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson</p><p>Rinzler, Sam, and Quorra, finding home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 0000

_[Find / -name tron-ja-307020]_

“Man, this place looks like a bomb hit it.  Are you sure we’re going the right way?”

“Yeah. You gonna make it?”

“Hey, after that _thing_ in Colorado two years ago? This is nothing. _Nothing_. Might as well just be driving on the interstate for as exciting as this— _holy shit look out_!”

“Roy, I need that arm to drive.”

“That was a gridbug. A _lot_ of gridbugs. Did we die and end up in a video game?”

“No, I think we’re both alive. And sane. Debatably sane.”

“No offense, Alan, but the next time you ask where my sense of adventure is, I’m gonna say _my dog ate it._ ”

_[“find -name \\*307020”]_

“Kevin, what the hell were you doing in here?”

“Surfing? Well, maybe re-enacting the Exxon Valdez. _Yuck_.”

“If Lora’s right, that light out there is our ticket out.”

“Hey, it doesn’t look like it’ll go out anytime soon. We can keep looking.”

“Sure?”

“It’s one of those feelings, right? You’ve humored me through all of mine. About time I return the favor.”

“C’mon. There’s something that looks like a monorail track over there. Maybe it’ll lead us somewhere.”

_[Find / -user abradley@en.com]_

“ _What_ is…”

“ _Tron_!”

“Oh hell that _is_ Tron, isn’t it? Wait! Alan! He’s covered in that black stuff!”

“No no  _no_.. c’mon, be alive. You can’t die on me, do you hear me? Stay with me.”

“We gotta get this helmet off. _Ow_. Careful, it’s _sharp_.”

“Stay with me… Stay with me… _Don’t you dare_ die on me.”

_[bad command or file name]_

Something is calling.

He cannot quite resolve it, tags reporting the sensation as familiar even though he has no recall of something like this. Something— _his User_ —something is calling insistently, dragging up the faint flickers of consciousness through the thick black _nothing_ of the Sea that seeped choking through the crack Clu— _leader/traitor/programmer/betrayer_ —put in his helmet.

The call is overwhelming, but he cannot answer, drained to the point of deresolution by time and the poison in the Sea battering at code and shell. Cannot move, cannot think except the faint, bright-jagged flickers of awareness that are coming slower and slower despite the root-deep _need_ to answer. No surprise. He has failed too many directives lately, and it would be _funny_ if the realization would hold still long enough before sliding away in favor of low power warnings and error messages.

He is dying, and something— _User/Alan-One/Creator/mine_ —drags him back from nothing. Power hovering at the edge of his awareness, bright and pure and full of something nameless that would make him weep if he had the strength.

_Don’t you dare die on me._

Command impossible.

Even the errors give up, functions winking out one by one, input degraded to near-nothing until even the _call_ is only the faintest thread. A nanocycle to spare for regret that wells up from that place behind partitions he does not dare to examine.

Darkness.

And then there is _light_.


	2. 0001

What happens next is _strange_.

Rinzler— _Tron/protector/ifightfor_ \--  wakes slowly, boot process lagging oddly and without the flashing errors of corrupted files and unauthorized processes he is accustomed to. Without any of the data he is accustomed to. System scan is silent, security channel is silent, orders silent, public bands silent, system clock silent… He can’t fully repress a shiver as broadcast scans through one by one and discards all channels, and then the _other_ silence registers.

_The Grid_ hums, alive, irresistible ticking beat that dictates the simple rhythm of life and vibrates barely-perceptibly through core and shell. Rinzler is used to the sound, used to listening because speech is forbidden, and it is _not there_.

Something _else_ , something _inward_ , speeds up in response and thumps through core and limbs almost uncomfortably, in time with the more familiar whirring rumble that rises and falls now with each breath as if linked to cooling systems.

Diagnostic initiates and returns equally corrupted. Base processes functional, yes, and minute twitches of limbs and joints return that he is not restrained. System scans _nonfunctional_ , broadcast _nonfunctional_ , and junk data is pinging in through sensor suites that make _no sense_ , triggering memory tags recently imported through _[LLLSDLaserControl/templates/test/prgm-translate.bin]_ which _is not possible_. The Portal does not operate without the master key— _User_ key. Sam_Flynn took the master key. User power signatures disappeared from the system shortly after his crash— _remembered/ifightfor_ —and the data are still there in his logs.

Yet he is here. Logfiles show power levels spiking back to functional after near-derezz and then, last, Portal transit authorized by abradley@en.com-- _User/mine/unworthy/why_ \-- and a file placed in memory by laser control. _[prgm-translate-readme-beta.txt]_ He does not open it.

Warily, he opens his eyes instead. The light is blinding, and Rinzler squeezes them shut again with a hiss, afterimages ghostly in receptors. Second attempt is more cautious, and for long moments after he _stares_. Light is everywhere, washing everything gold-green, and surroundings are rendered with staggering detail. He is in living quarters, familiar shapes of chairs and a low table and the couch he is laying on. The shapes are softer, none of the sharp, efficient angles he is accustomed to, and heavily detailed with ornamentation. _User_ aesthetics—he remembers seeing similar when Clu traced Flynn’s bolt-hole. Nothing self-lit, but there is no _need_ here with light pouring in through windows so brightly that there are filters in place to diffuse it. The light holds suspended data-dust, moving to currents unseen, and Rinzler looks for signs of data-growth, curious. Wherever _here_ is, it must have been abandoned a long time ago for dust to have crept in. No sign of _growth_ , though, so no power source nearby.

Someplace secret, hidden away in this new system, and with no power to leave him dependent. Whoever— _my User_ —removed him from the Grid would want that kind of control— _glitched/dangerous/failed/why_ —over him. The question is not why. Why is never something for him to know. Only what use he will see next. Rinzler is too valuable a tool to leave idle long, and Clu is gone— _reintegrated_. It is a matter of time until all this is gone anyway, _gone_ like the things seeping out from behind partition and layers of reprimand, little bursts of forbidden, fragmented information that do more to confuse than enlighten.

But he is awake now, and that is his— _User_ —captor’s _mistake_.

Movement is smooth and steady as he rolls from laying prone to crouch on the floor, sensors straining to pick up data since scans are useless here. The living quarters are large and open, zoned into discrete spaces for gathering and work, though _what_ work is a mystery. He leaves behind black, gritty streaks on the couch, which is covered against such contamination, and more is dried to his gridsuit, remnants of the Sea that make tactiles crawl with unpleasant sensation— _itching_ —and present a challenge to evading and hiding. He can’t leave a trail, but the dried-on poison flakes away with each small movement. He needs _data_. Command. He is not— _is_ —meant to run independent, but Clu is not here— _reintegrated/failed directive/Flynn why_ —and as the fact fully _logs_ processes skip and stutter, something shifting behind partitions as lockup suddenly looms because he has _[error/invalid directive/bad command or file name]_

Rinzler doesn’t lock. The internal, thumping, pulsing _thing_ doesn’t allow it, prompting cues to _breathe_ and _steady position_ without conscious override. Dizzy and looping furiously, he kneels in place, head bowed. Vibration registers through the floor—footsteps, sound confirming a few moments later. A decision gate. Remain in place, wait to be recoded— _unworthy/broken/whywhywhywhy_ —or _move_.

He moves, _want_ bursting through processes and overriding the pained loop. He has survived so far— _don’t you dare die on me_ —and he wants to keep this, to _know_. No disks for defense, but harder to recode this way, too, and escape vectors unknown, but there _is_ a hiding place. He lunges for it, sliding over the smooth floor to take shelter under the couch and the covering draped over it that obscures him from view. It’s a tight fit, and he fights to damp _sound_ , breathing annoyingly continuing even in shallow little sips of air that he would rather _stop_ but cannot cancel process.

The steps approach, soft tread that would be easy to miss if Rinzler was not listening closely for it, going softer on final approach. Attempting stealth?

“Tron?” The voice is female, high and sweet and a little burred, and something core-deep _keens_ at the sound— _yoriyoriyori_ —in recognition and that is not possible either because there is no program designated _Yori_ in the Grid. There is no program designated _Tron_ here, either— _lie_ —and  Rinzler holds position, holds _breath_ , and waits.

“Where are you hiding?” she murmurs, stepping close enough he can see her feet. Bare and without the markings of circuits. ISO? Or are the surreal, impossible log entries _true_?

“Tron? Please come out. I won’t hurt you.” Steps trail away, seeking elsewhere in the space as she keeps calling out to a program who doesn’t exist.

Rinzler is having trouble holding his breath, glitch like a low power warning on the edges of his sensors before he finally caves and lets cooling resume. Foreign relief runs through him, the glitch clearing almost immediately, and he frowns to himself as he peers out. There is something very wrong with his functioning if cooling is linked so tightly to power regulation.

Stalemate cannot be maintained, and he has chosen to _fight_.

He slips out, calculating possibilities as he stalks toward the sound of the calling. Data and hostage against his captors— _mustn’t harm her/can’t/Yori_ —is a start. _Won’t_ be recoded again.

She has found a work area and started in on some task, reaches for a tool, and he strikes. Almost laughably weak, though the shriek is loud and he pulls her away from the workstation, alert for signs of incoming combatants.

“What the--! _Tron_!” She tugs ineffectually at his arms, amusement of all things where there should be panic, and Rinzler’s noise surges at the misidentification. There is _no Tron here_.

“ _Rinzler_ , then! Rinzler… stop it,” she says, and he walks them back anyway, back to his waking point, and he tosses her onto the couch without effort. Easy to box her in there. She squeaks again and rights, looking up at him in open curiosity—why isn’t she _afraid_? Moments more, and she actually pats the cushion next to her in clear _invitation_.

“It’s all right. You startled me.”

Maybe she has other abilities. _If_ this is the User world— _unworthy/why_ —he cannot assume the rules are the same as the system. Flynn was dangerous when he chose to be. Rinzler considers the hand on the cushion and perches on the table instead, coiled, weight on the balls of his feet in case he needs to _spring_. Stays alert for signs that security has been called, listening and trying to track the small noises that seem to come from everywhere despite the lack of the Grid-hum he’s used to.

“Happy now?”

He looks back and sees her smiling at him, paradoxical creature that she is. Not afraid, not at all, something like sympathy in her expression.

“Nobody is going to hurt you.” _Lie_. “You’re safe.” And she reaches and takes his wrist before he can pull back.

Rinzler _freezes_ , breath freezing as well, and waits for the invasive curl of touch-scan and power drain and any of the hundred small things Clu has done to show his displeasure over the cycles or _worse_. _Stupid_. And she just… holds, thumb running along the dead channel where a circuit-line should be, tactiles picking up the muffled pressure and nothing more. He stares at her hand on his, but still there is contact and nothing more.

“My name is Lora,” she says softly, “You’re Rinzler. Right?”

Stare cuts back to her face and he nods, numbly. Lora. _Not_ Yori, and part of him wilts in disappointment he can’t trace beyond the partition guarding what happened before Flynn’s— _Clu’s_ —betrayal. She is still smiling at him, the expression shading oddly with concern as her free hand reaches for his helmet—no, his _face_. His face is uncovered. _Forbidden_. But… she is not angry, distracted by the very old data-loss along cheek and neck and jaw.

“Lora? What happened? I heard a--”

Rinzler moves before the call can finish, surges to his feet and yanks Lora close, hand at her throat but no pressure— _no, not her_ —and.

It’s like seeing Flynn for the first time in a thousand cycles, features weathered with _something_ and pigment shaded grayscale, only this is _his face_ staring back. His face. _His_.

“ _User_.” The word skips, hoarse, vocals hopelessly glitched but understandable, and he can’t stop the flinch at expected reprimand because words are _forbidden_. It doesn’t come. Face and then voice and _still_ nothing happens, just Lora’s steady breath and the User— _his_ User warily watching. Noise rumbles out loud, intense vibration through throat and chest, no other thought but _don’t let go_ because Lora is the only shield he has and even a beta can calculate that what _made him_ can _unmake him_.

“Morning, Alan,” she says, and he can see the faint quirk at the corner of her lips.

“Are you all right?” his User— _Alan-One/Alan/abradley@en.com--_ finally manages, eyes darting between the two of them, tensed for action as Rinzler is tensed.

“I’m fine. Rinzler and I were just talking. I think you startled him.”

“Rinzler.” There is a flat quality to the word, Alan’s expression goes shuttered, and it takes an act of will to keep from falling into familiar submissive hunch. Lora’s hand finds the one at her throat and gently pries it away, and he lets her.

“Mmmm-hmmm. Alan, this is Rinzler. Rinzler, this is Alan.”

“Alan-One,” he says softly, _recognition_ , and hates the edge of entreaty in the word. Lora does not continue to try and work loose, just holds the hand she has taken and nods. Alan-One looks between them and steps forward, measured, and now Lora is holding _him_ from letting go and trying to find another, more defensible position. _Stupid stupid stupid stupid_ —

“I’m sorry.” The words… the words don’t make any _sense_ , quiet and steady, and Lora is suddenly too strong for all she is holding him by the hand, and he can’t _escape,_ and _his User_ is approaching.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t find you sooner,” Alan-One says, hands warm on Rinzler’s arms and sadness in his eyes and it makes no sense— _failed/why/unworthy/why/not Tron_ —because Rinzler is a tool, and Alan-One is a User, and one does not _apologize_ to a tool no matter how useful. And he is still glitching _frozen_ , the only movement short, rapid breath, and Alan-One’s expression shutters again, and _want_ flashes through faster than he can process, but they are separating. Lora lets him go.

Of course. _Rinzler_ is not _Tron_. Clear which the Users were _hoping_ to find.

The hollow, aching realization distracts, but he does not fight as Alan-One shifts, hands sliding over shoulders to his back, briefly following the edge of empty disk dock. He will be recoded, too _stupid_ to run and unwanted search result— _Tron, what have you become?_ —and he welcomes losing _this_ knowing because it _hurts_.

Except the User simply draws him into an embrace, murmurs another apology into his ear.

After a long microcycle, Rinzler returns it.


	3. 0010

This is the User world.

The readme is _not helpful_.

They—the Users, Alan— _mine_ —and Lora, lead Rinzler slowly through their dwelling, providing tutorial. _Showing around_ , they call it, and there is much to show. Tools, spaces, designations, and much of the tour is spent processing and tagging new vocabulary. Some of it reads in familiar— _Relax man, can’t have too many cooks in the kitchen_ —but he cannot place it entirely. He does not _know_ , only there is enough _to_ know that it registers only the faintest displeasure. It is the first task the Users set him, and he can’t fail— _won’t be recoded_ —at such a beta-level test.

He is assigned a space of his own, tagged _guest bedroom,_ and left to his own devices while Lora and Alan retreat to find something to replace the soiled and damaged armor. Rinzler would simply derezz it and bring up a new set, but the template is on his disks, and his disks are _elsewhere_ , and more worryingly the command line is _not there_. He still tries for a solid five microcycles before giving it up, since the _itching_ has slowly gotten worse the longer he has been active. While he has not noticed a significant _downgrade_ in his tactile sensors, the sensation is highly distracting.

Instead, he stands in the middle of the room, where he was left— _short leash/independent/can’t_ —and looks around out of the corners of his eyes. There is no wall unit for sleeping, and the space is dominated by the luxury of a platform much like Clu’s quarters. Instead of the dominating black and gold, though, white stained with a cool hint of blue and the complex combination of shades of brown that make up the most common User construction material mark the place completely alien, not helped by the dizzying bursts of color held by images and pointless decorative elements. There is storage, and a chair, and something that might be a light source but seems utterly redundant. Windows take up a significant portion of one wall, letting in the ambient light from _outside_ , and it is more than bright enough to make his eyes sting. Wistfully, he wishes he could set the filters, _curtains_ , so that it does not hurt to keep up visual scans.

That must be the _test_.

Rinzler can still at least close his eyes against the brilliance, sighing when the low-grade pain of overwhelming input stops. Testing is familiar— _perfected/never submit to you_ —and this is another easy one. It will escalate, inevitably, but for now the relative peace is welcome.

Maybe, if he can pass all testing protocols, he won’t be recoded.

Not even wishful thinking, this time, to wonder if he will be able to _keep_ this. Not with the apology still so recently written to memory— _to him, to him and not Tron, please to him_ —and the earlier, corrupted fragments of clues in logfiles. Alan-One brought him _out_ , and it would have been easier to rewrite him _inside_. Speculation, though. Speculation is _not wise_. Future modeling and simulation are wanted only when dealing with _threats_. No, better to leave unwise calculations behind.

So Rinzler waits, eyes closed and listening for the tread that indicates a return above the familiar thrum of his own noise. Easy tests. _Trivial_. He will pass and execute whatever function is assigned next because he is perfect— _fight for the/Flynn! Go!_ —nothing else.

Thirty-five microcycles later, they return.

“Oh, sorry we took so long. I wanted to wash off the clippers. I don’t care if we’re going to have to throw out that armor, I didn’t want to risk you getting an infection if I slip—“ Lora’s voice cuts off as she enters, a few steps in front of Alan, who is carrying a bundle of garments similar to the ones noncombat programs favor. There is something _off_ about both of their nonverbals, a sudden tension that was not there before. Rinzler’s fists curl, and he has a maddening impulse to _hide_ again, but he keeps gaze fixed ahead and _still_.

“Thank you, Rinzler,” Alan says finally, a gruff edge to the tone, and he sets down the clothes. Rinzler twitches a nod, acknowledging the faint praise, left wondering what he has done _wrong_ even as Lora seems to shake herself and forces a smile.

“Anyway, according to Sam, we’re going to have to cut you out of this. I’m afraid—what did he call it? _Rezzing_ a new suit is impossible here,” she says brightly, emphasis on the unfamiliar term, and shows him a wicked looking implement. It is _sharp_ , that much he can tell, and though she is talking he can’t tear his gaze away from it. _Anticipated_ , this test, but never comfortable.

“Bathroom,” Alan interrupts, withdrawing a few garments from the pile and motioning to take the clippers from Lora. “It’s past time we got that gunk off you anyway. Come on.”

He follows, the somewhat darker corridor a relief from the unrelenting bright in the guest room. The bathroom, too, is dim enough to be tolerable, the light diffused and washed bluish by filters on the windows. Lora follows last, at least until Alan gives her a pained look and shakes his head.

“ _Alan_. Be serious,” she says at the silent communication. Perhaps broadcast exists here after all.

“I’m being perfectly serious; you don’t have to stay.”

“I don’t have to, but I’d better. Honestly, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before. _At length_.”

Alan goes _red_ at that, sputters, and Rinzler can’t completely bite off the faint snicker at the User’s obvious discomfort. The memory replay from Sam_Flynn had shown equal illogical shyness at exposing raw shell. He fights to keep expression schooled, though, when Alan’s eyes resettle on him suspiciously. Lora just _laughs_.

“Fine. Gang up on me,” Alan says after a microcycle or two, but there is a faint smile in his expression. It is strange to see so much smiling and laughing, but no hint of _threat_ in nonverbals. Perhaps the Users are simply better at hiding their purpose.

“I’ll start the shower.” And Lora bustles around the room, gathering more cloth and things in bottles and humming lightly to herself. Alan, meanwhile, eyes the armor speculatively, and Rinzler bites the inside of his cheek very lightly as the User hooks fingers into the collar of his armor. He mustn’t move, mustn’t react, even though he anticipates the painful bite of the clippers— _the bite of a disk into his arm and Clu’s pleased words when he does not flinch even when voxels crack and break away_. He can feel cool, smooth metal against his throat and swallows, resolutely tracking Lora’s movement.

“What _is_ this stuff? It’s like trying to cut a tire…” Alan’s words register but don’t process, and the collar of his suit loosens with a faint snip sound. The clippers slowly warm, almost ticklish as they travel slowly down his front, and Rinzler almost relaxes before remembering the _test_. Lora stills at last, manipulating some kind of control set into the wall of a cubicle partitioned by a curtain, almost out of place with the rest of the room.

“How are you doing?” she asks, and Alan rubs his hands as he sets the clippers down. He almost looks as if the job was painful—but _why_?

“I think we can peel him out now,” he says, and nods to Rinzler, “We’ll pull one way, you pull the other. That suit’s practically painted on, so it’ll take some doing to get it off.”

Rinzler blinks, watches as the two Users start at the collar and slowly pull the gridsuit away from his shell. Nods and rolls shoulders, biting down on the thin margin he can feel now between the outer shell of his fingers and the suit to aid in eeling out of the material covering hands and arms. He is quickly stripped to the waist and pauses, examining what the Portal has done to him. No circuit lines, just smooth, pale outer render that is streaked liberally with black grime from the Sea. The only aberration is the data loss, the edges of which he can just see spidering down his torso and shoulder from the main break on his left where a disk nearly made a killing strike to his neck, but instead of _absence_ , it is a slightly raised and faded red mark that follows the old, jagged edge.

Stripping off the rest of the suit is easy, though it brings confusing new data once his bare feet touch the floor. Without the gridsuit to muffle tactile sensors, data about temperature and air currents and the slightly rough, cold tile on the floor floods in, rich with small detail that files quickly under the new tags from the Portal. Rinzler decides he does _not like_ the cold that seeps up from the material, which is much like the faceted stone of the Outlands except grey and not so sharp-edged. Naked but unhurt— _where is the test?_ —Rinzler watches Lora return to the cubicle and turn an oversized dial, eyes going wide as _water_ starts to cascade from a device near the ceiling. _Oh_ , the _test_ is now, as cruel and clever as any of Clu’s.

“Come on.. you’ll feel better when you’re clean,” Lora coaxes, and Rinzler realizes he has frozen again, staring, and he _should_ go forward— _cold/drowning/choking/burning/nothing_ —but limbs refuse to engage. He has to obey, _he has to_ , or they will take _this_ and take _everything_ , but he won’t _move_.

“Rinzler?” Lora gives him an unreadable look— _whywhywhywhy_ —as Alan carefully shoves him forward, feet skidding as deeper directives— _don’t die on me_ —fight the need to obey the order.

“He had a bad experience with water not long ago,” Alan says, pausing to strip off part of his own clothing, “Should have seen it coming.”

“We can use the sink.”

“Somehow I don’t think that’ll help. Hang on.” Alan has his hand, fist curled so tight the nails bite into his palm, pain _welcome_ to try and clear the locking loop of _panic_ — _nothing/failure/why_ —and the User pulls them _both_ partway into the spray.

“ _Alan!”_

The water is warm, like the heat of an energy spring, and drums harmlessly against his shell. It almost feels _good_. Rinzler stares at it, breathing only by virtue of whatever script keeps his cooling functions working on automatic, and watches the water rinse away the black streaks. Cleanup and defragmentation, rain tamed through some obscure User design.

“See? You’re fine. You’re safe. It’s not going to hurt you,” Alan murmurs, “You’re safe. Bet it feels a hell of a lot better, doesn’t it?”

“Give me a _heart attack_ ,” Lora says shakily, “What if _he’d_ —what if you’d fallen? You could have been _hurt_. You both could have.”

“Works on Zap.”

“Zap is a _cat_.”

“Cats have claws,” and Alan seems obscurely pleased by the announcement. It does not calculate properly. He did not _obey_. He required direct intervention to go into the cubicle. _Why_ is the User smiling slyly? A light push, and Rinzler stands alone under the water, warmer and with itchy sensation banished by the defrag. He waits, tense, for reprimand, for demand to submit to recoding— _failed the test_ —for the water to change to something more harmful, but none of these things happen. Steam curls up from the spray and water runs into his eyes until he has to blink it back, watching the byplay between the Users, and _still nothing happens_ aside from Lora swatting Alan with something that leaves no damage.

“Soap. Before you kill me,” Lora says, handing off implements, and soon they are both occupied with scrubbing off the last of the Sea’s poison. Rinzler tries to take the substance— _not a beta_ —but they wave him off more than once until he finally submits.

 _Where is the test?_ He does not know.

Drying and re-outfitting take place smoothly, User garments unfamiliar but simple in basic principles. Without the distraction of the _itching_ and with all sensors uncovered and engaged, texture leaps into definition, and Rinzler can’t quite help the impulse to rub his fingers against the surfaces he passes as the Users lead him into the kitchen.

“All right… Let’s try something easier this time,” Lora says as Alan directs him into a chair, “Tea can’t be too hard, can it?”


	4. 0011

They are not alone in the house.

There have been elliptical references to something designated _Zap_ in the conversations between the Users, a pair of bowls in the kitchen decorated with unidentifiable footprints, and _more_ he can hear the faint _skittering_ like a gridbug’s tread. Rinzler cannot initiate a system scan. There is no security band to monitor, no guard or sentries to direct to the places he hears faint whispers of _threat_. He is— _was_ —Clu’s enforcer, perfect and deadly, and tied deeply into the security suite, and there is nothing to _secure_ here. It is _irritating_.

He is not given orders, either. Tutorial, _yes_ , and that absorbs much of the next millicycle. He sees very quickly why Clu was eager to perfect this world— _My world? I guess you could say it’s a lovely mess_. He does not think Clu would have liked to endure its imperfection in the mean-time. Tutorial is mastered easily, though. He does not even need prompting the second time he is given leave to take energy, curiously flat without the buzz of power and alive with sensations he barely has a name for, and he itches to analyze properly, but the implied order is to _recharge_ not explore. The rest is just endless follow and wait, follow and wait, follow and wait, and _Rinzler,_ _sit down_.

It is only mildly reassuring that the Users— _his Users_ —seem as discomfited with his current lack of function as he is.

They leave. Lora to the too-bright outside to tend her garden, Alan to his office to make arrangements. Arrangements for _what_ he does not say. Rinzler’s last order was to sit, and so he sits, legs folded beneath him on the too-soft couch, and waits some more.

Slowly the light outside fades to something tolerable. Overblown whiteness gives way to form and color. Buildings, mostly, smaller dwellings that seem terribly isolated. Towers in the distance, faded and hazy blue shapes that are the most familiar thing he’s seen in this place. The sky is bright with blue edged now in purple and soothing oranges and reds, familiar shapes of clouds in unfamiliar whites and grays floating as serenely here as they ever did in the Grid. Rinzler watches them, itchy deep in his code and restless from the enforced idleness, but he has already _disobeyed_ one order, and he _will not_ be recoded.

The skittering sounds again. _Closer_.

Attention snaps to the sound, though Rinzler does not move. Footsteps pad close, soft breathing faster than his own or that of the Users. Too many steps anyway. This creature walks on more than two feet. Small, like a gridbug. Could the dwelling be infested? Is _that_ why he is here now? _No_. It can’t. A _test_ , perhaps, to deal with something so far beneath his normal function. He is no mindless, newly-created sentry— _perfect/independent_ —to be relegated to follow, wait, and gridbug clearing.

It approaches, fearless of him, and even a gridbug is smart enough to scuttle to safety when it detects a security signature in the process list if it is outside of a swarm. Stuck clearing a _stupid_ gridbug, at that.

Rinzler wants an answer, a _function_ , so much breath hitches for a moment. He is meant for function, for use. He is a tool. He must have a _purpose_. Why _else_ would the User— _one does not apologize to a tool_ —have brought him here? Decision gate looms, _twice_ in as many millicycles. Obey the order or hunt down the anomaly?

He _hunts_. Anything is better than this neutral uselessness.

The window-filters— _curtains_ —chirp an eerie acknowledgement, the material billowing wildly as the _something_ — _gridbug_?—skitters into a slide that ends somewhere under the room’s largest storage unit. Rinzler slides off the couch in return, approach slow and careful since he _is_ unarmed, and a bug bite is an indignity he will _not_ be suffering this millicycle. A too-many-legged shape lurks in the narrow clearance between the bottom of the storage unit and the floor, movements twitchy and tense.

“Look, Sam, why don’t you come over? No, I don’t think you should go to the arcade right now… It was just the basement office, the short didn’t even start a fire… Of course I checked, Sam… Sam we _all_ checked… _No._ ”

Alan-One’s voice. Rinzler freezes and slides back to the couch, re-arranging to make it look as if he never moved. It is not a difficult task, practiced to utter perfection cycles and cycles ago. Curious at the words—obviously not meant for _him_ —Rinzler’s eyes seek out the mirror that hangs along one wall of the space. From this angle it reflects Alan-One’s workspace, and Rinzler can see him holding something sleek and black to his ear as he paces out into the larger room.

“Sam, I realize you’re working on very little sleep and no proper food, so I am going to pretend you didn’t say that.”

Is he talking to User Sam_Flynn?

“It’s all right… Look, you still have it backed up, right? We can plug it in and see what shape everything’s in. _Without_ turning everything on.”

The User is distracted by his disjointed conversation. Rinzler watches a little longer as he circles between the desk glimpsed inside the workspace, the open door, and the railing of the stairs which affords a clear view to the bright back window and the garden. Alan-One is not likely to interrupt or notice, then. Rinzler is perfectly silent, and he knows how to avoid drawing attention when an admin is deep in conversation with another subordinate.

“Flash drive is just storage. It doesn’t even get power… Yes, I’m sure… Look, Roy made off with the drive. You can see it for yourself when you come over.”

Rinzler slides off the couch again, the rise and fall of words in the background more than enough cover for his faint steps. He will take care of this bug and no one will ever have to know he ignored the order…

It is not there. No hunched up shape, no darker black against the shadowed space.

“They’re only sleeping,” Alan-One says, and bites off a laugh, “Yeah, ok, I guess that _is_ what it sounds like.”

Eeling along the floor, Rinzler initiates visual scan for signs of the something, or at least places where it can possibly be hiding. There is another _chirp_ , but vector-trace is impossible with the User talking over all. Rinzler glares at the hand held spread to the ground, wishing for scan that would light the creature’s steps and give him a trace.

There again, that is _cheating_. He has not had a challenge in too many cycles to cheat just yet.

“Come for dinner. We can talk about it together… All right, _point_. How about we bring it to you?”

The gridbug is small and there are still many locations to check. Its faint chattering chirps intensify, so it is still in the area. Rinzler doubles back to check under the couch. There are shapes there, but none big enough to be the bug.

Still, he reaches for one. It is unalive, rough to the touch but with a soft give as he pulls it closer for visual inspection. The shape and material are unfamiliar—it looks something like a yes-bit, but a more toxic, almost virus-yellow and rounded off… and something green sticks out of it like an afterthought. Something to do with plants, perhaps? The Users have not given permission to touch the scattered plants on display yet, but the green does not have the glossy quality of the true plants.

User-sensors come less naturally, but Rinzler takes a breath and makes the attempt. It smells like something sharp, like the energy— _tea_ —Lora gave him after defrag.

The cadence of Alan-One’s words is slowing. Rinzler sets aside the curious not-bit and begins to back away.

There is another chirp, close this time, and Rinzler seizes the chance to snatch the gridbug—

Something heavy lands on his back with a loud chirp, heavy enough to knock Rinzler’s breathing off-beat for a moment, and his hand closes on nothing where there was a blur of color before, white and dark grey.

The bug is standing on his back, four feet planted firmly, and it makes an inquisitive trilling noise.

Rinzler _growls_ , reaching behind to snag the bug, which stands where his disk dock was. Something, the bug perhaps, thumps the back of his head gently, and he can hear another _sound_ rumbling counterpoint to his. It is laughably easy to grab, warm and soft and fuzzy the way blankets are, and Rinzler can feel the vibration of its _sound_ and the quick pulse of _heartbeat_ through his fingers as he shifts to sit up and examine it closer.

It seems pleased to be dropped in Rinzler’s lap for analysis, and butts its head against his hand only to rub its cheek along his fingers. It does not look like a gridbug, though its yawn as it attempts to rub its surface area over Rinzler’s shell reveals sharp teeth. Its outer render is covered in blanket-fluff, parts white and parts shaded blurry stripes of dark grey and black. Four limbs end in appendages housing claws, though the claws’ tips are cut off, and a fifth appendage curls up from the rear with no obvious function except to look strange. The only thing over its outer render is a collar, decorated with indecipherable characters and a tiny, metallic object that chimes softly when Rinzler pokes it.

“I see you met Zap,” Alan-One says, a laugh buried in his voice, and Rinzler starts and looks up.

Alan-One loosely holds the device he had been speaking into, leaning down to run fingertips along the Zap-bug’s ears and then scratch behind them vigorously. The Zap-bug leans into the touch, its _sound_ intensifying as it makes a muddy little trill of pleasure. It makes no move to leave Rinzler’s lap, and despite the scattered impulse to kneel, to find some _other_ program to deflect the coming storm of rage toward, he sits as well. At some point his breath cut out, and it re-starts with a faint _gasp_ as irritating failsafes kick in. The User does not seem to note it, distracted by the bug— _waiting for the truth to set in and the fear to tick achingly through processes_ —and almost smiling.

Alan-One moves from his crouch to sitting crosslegged on the floor in front of Rinzler, still scratching the Zap-bug affectionately.

“I was wondering when he’d show his face after all the excitement last night,” the User says, though whether to clarify thoughts to himself or attempt to engage conversation Rinzler cannot tell. He tilts his head in what is hopefully an encouraging manner, waiting for the User to go on— _if Clu is talking, reprimand and recoding are delayed_.

“Zap, this is Rinzler. He’s going to be staying with us for a while,” Alan-One continues softly, and the Zap-bug chirps back an acknowledgement. “Rinzler, this is Zap. He is what we call a _cat_. Cats are… well, their primary function is companionship, but they can also hunt and kill unwanted things like bugs. Zap is a special kind of cat called a bobtail, which is why his tail looks so funny.”

The User takes a moment to pet the fuzzy puff, temporarily uncurling a short length of tail.

“He’s a little off breed standard, which is why he’s with us, but he’s a good cat.”

So the Zap-bug is already installed to deal with gridbug clearing. What, then, is _Rinzler’s_ function? To follow and wait and observe? He bows his head over the ecstatic little creature, who looks at him with half-slitted golden eyes and seems to smile back. Is this the next test? Or has he already failed it? Twice-disobeyed orders by one count of User time, and still Alan-One does nothing. Perhaps Rinzler will follow and wait until he breaks and _begs_ to be recoded. Is that what they want? Is this how they punish him for disobeying? Broadcast-deaf and scan-blind and no _action_ to take except _wait_ , and now the Zap-bug held as an example of how to be _good_. It is subtle and insidious, and it seems to be working _too well_.

“User?” And _oh_ Rinzler wants to recall the word as soon as it is spoken, flinching hard enough to disturb the Zap-bug into a chattering chirp. Wants _more_ to go on, to take the small grace of words not yet forbidden. It will not _matter_ , transgression more than _enough_ , and he has to _know_ before the not-knowing breaks him. “What is _my_ function?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Alan-One says, and a warm hand closes over Rinzler’s wrist, “I’m not sure what your function should be, now. I think we might be able to figure it out together. Is that acceptable?”

Rinzler blinks away the edge of confused lockup, staring at the loose hold on his wrist, and nods. It must be acceptable because the User suggested it, but… why does _figure it out_ feel more daunting than the prospect of recode?


	5. 0100

For some time, things are calm. Rinzler learns the patterns of the house, the careful dance his Users execute to ensure that one of them is with him at all times. He learns Alan-One’s runs before light cracks the sky open. He learns Lora’s first cup of tea on the porch. Endless communiques. _Weeding_. RKleinburg— _Ram_ — _Roy_ and his sporadic visits, bearing some arcane device that immediately arrests all motion in favor of shutting away in Alan-One’s workspace and long discussions with Sam_Flynn over broadcast that can only imperfectly be overheard.

He learns he can overhear much if he taunts Zap with a piece of what the Users call _string_.

He learns darkness in the User world is more and less absolute than the Grid’s default settings. More, for without User devices there is no real illumination, not even the old familiar glow of circuits against his shell. Less, because the sky here is shot with lights that move and change slowly through the dark. Rinzler watches them often, the in-out fade of distant brilliance and the two-toned pattern on the largest source, which sometimes lingers into the morning.

The millicycles string together. He does not sleep. Could— _should_ —but he has gone a double-hex and more without before, and sleep is _disturbing_.

Night comes. The Users walk him to the guest room, watch the small ritual of changing clothes, wait until he has settled onto the platform, alone, and found a space under the blankets. The sleeping-platform— _bed_ —is not much to his liking, too open, too vulnerable without someone to share. Still, he waits, curled in the middle, and the lights shut off. Sometimes the Users retire as well, sometimes they retreat into the living space, but they send him into the guest room at the same rough timestamp. This time, perhaps because Roy was around and they spoke until morning, they retire, footsteps tracing the path to their own assigned space.

Rinzler waits, hearing the now-familiar sounds of the Users preparing for soft shutdown. Hears the patter of Zap patrolling through the hall in their wake before the cat-bug settles under Rinzler’s own platform. He waits, burrowed in the warm, prompts threatening to drag him under into proper hibernation. He still feels mildly detached as the house settles into standby, but he slips out of bed regardless. Pads, barefoot, silently through the house and out onto the porch. The night is cloudy, churning with clouds stained just slightly orange from the lights of the city, but through the gaps he can see the distant lights in the sky.

Some of them move, a common occurrence, but his eyes track it anyway and widen as one grows larger. Resolves.

“ _No_ ,” he whispers, feeling his shattered vocals skip.

It is the _Rectifier_. The silhouette is unmistakable against the night, growing, growing as it approaches the towers of the User city. It floats, _impossible_ , because he _felt_ the reintegration and the _failure_ tearing at his code even as the Sea clawed at him. The logs are corrupted but he _felt it_ , yet cannot dismiss the evidence of Clu triumphant before his eyes. Clu is here. Clu is here and will rectify the User world, keep his promise to the army of sentries, so many of them newborn, and Rinzler _should_ go to him as is his _place_ and _yet_ —and yet he stands, stares. Clu will make this world _perfect_ and Rinzler…

Rinzler will lose them. There is no room in a perfect system for his Users, for Lora’s one-sided conversations with her plants and Alan-One’s habit of losing styluses in every conceivable location. He half-locks, conflicted. There _should_ be no room for such wasteful imperfection, for all the power at their command, and _yet_ …

“Did you really think the game was over, _old friend_?”

 _Clu_.

He turns slowly, unhurried, sees the utterly commonplace gold circuits, bright enough to dazzle in the dark of the User-world night, and the pleased half-smile on the luminary’s face. Watches Clu step closer, close enough to touch until proximity warnings send phantom prickling sensation across his shell. In one hand, the _programmer/betrayer/leader/traitor_ holds a pair of disks loosely. _His_. Clu offers. Hesitantly, Rinzler takes them, feels them fit perfectly into his hands, razor sharp against his unarmored shell.

“We have work to do,” Clu says, running fingertips disdainfully over the edge of the chair Lora prefers. “Go on. Tie up the loose ends and we can get out of here.”

Rinzler freezes. The meaning is clear enough. He _should_.. He should and he _can’t_.

“No.” It is the only _right/wrong_ answer.

“No? Do you think you’re a User to tell me _no_?” Clu says, and the sharp-edged smile is there, keen as ever, and Rinzler can only watch his admin approach.

It is no surprise when Clu backhands him, catching the mark— _the scar_ —where old damage was. Rinzler’s jaw throbs as he pushes up, only to be pinned back down, a tight grip against the back of his throat as disks are wrenched free, slicing deep into his hands. Pain rips through his sensors as Clu strikes again, between his shoulders, disk dock where there was nothing but smooth shell before. Dazed, Rinzler squirms, scrabbling at the rough material of the porch as Clu jams his disks home again. He can feel his code crawl, direct interface blooming at his back as Clu’s knee presses against his spine with choking pressure. He is being _recoded_ , memory-stamps of the same spiraling out endlessly as the realization processes. His hand catches the leg of a chair, and with strength born of desperation he swings the improvised weapon.

Clu catches, shifts his weight forward until Rinzler can’t breathe, darkness at the edges of his sight in that useless User-glitch. The chair clatters over the steps, the fingers at his neck digging in as the light-headed feeling worsens, air and internal power-flow choking off.

“You’re so cute when you fight,” Clu murmurs, and something _shifts_ and unlocks. This has happened before, he has done this before, a _thousand times_ before, struggled and screamed and fought, and Clu _broke him anyway_.

“Scream all you want, _Tron_ ,” Clu croons, and Rinzler can feel his code ripping down to base functions, agony arcing from his dock, and he can’t _move_ , can’t _breathe_. The dark threatening the edges of his perceptions rushes in and he is _falling_ —

Something clatters. Phantom sensation of pain ticks on for microcycles before settling in one hand, and something sweet-metallic coats the inside of his mouth. The pain is localized now, no longer radiating from his back, but he still can’t _move_ and it is dark, darker than moments ago. Something touches his shoulder— _a hand_ —and gives it a gentle shake.

“Rinzler? It’s Lora. Are you all right?”

No— _nononononono_ —if _Lora/Yori_ is here than Clu could… Clu _would_ …

“How is he?” Alan-One, his voice sleep-rough as it often was when he greeted Rinzler in the morning.

“Hard to say. Bad dream, I think,” Lora says, and for a moment Rinzler squeezes his eyes shut tighter, bites down and feels a fresh gout of pain and fluid in his mouth. Stray memory sequence— _a dream_ —and so Clu was still safely _derezzed_.

“Come on.. let me see that hand.” The platform shifts, new weight disrupting the equilibrium, and warm fingers run along his jaw. After a moment, Rinzler opens his mouth, eyes still shut, and lets the Users take his hand. The shell there tickles faintly around the throbbing of the injury he must have given himself. He hears Lora make a small, pained noise as he’s hauled more upright and extracted from the tangle of blanket.

Rinzler opens his eyes to watch her inspecting his right hand, Alan-One hovering on his other side and frowning fiercely. They lock eyes, and for a dizzy moment Rinzler could derezz on the spot for the tightly-leashed fury he sees. Then the User blinks, something unreadable now in his gaze, and he rests a heavy hand on Rinzler’s head to stroke through his hair.

“You did a number on your poor hand,” Lora says, drawing Rinzler’s gaze away, gratefully. There is a definite break in his render, already discoloring spectacularly, and fluid is coming up out of the deepest parts of the break… _red_ fluid. _Blood_. He can still taste the remnants of it.

“It was some dream,” Alan-One says gruffly, and sets a storage unit on the bed. Inside are tools that Lora sorts through expertly, and Alan holds his hand still while she scrubs out the injury and wraps it. Rinzler watches, swallowing the metallic taste in his mouth. _Blood_. Users bleed. He is not a User. He is bleeding. The input makes less than no sense, and now he can feel himself hitting hard physical limits, shivering as his processes scatter, the _unknown_ time spent dreaming having awakened the _need_ for hibernation, memory-sort. _Sleep_.

Rinzler wants to sleep even _less_ than before. Clu’s voice in his ear, breath warm on his cheek… the recall is too close, and he shudders at it.

The Users withdraw, leaving the room illuminated, and Rinzler kicks off the blankets even as he shakes harder, motor control glitching hard. Curls up tight, dreading the moment he loses consciousness again, and almost does not catch the pair re-entering. Alan-One carries more bedding, yawns, and starts adding it to the collection on the platform. Lora follows closely, carrying a mug of something that steams right to his side.

“Here… drink this. You’ll feel better,” she says, coaxing, “Take it slow. It’s hot.”

The damaged part of Rinzler’s hand is tender, pain welling up where he presses it against the warm mug, but it clears his processes a little. Lora gives him an encouraging little nod and the platform tilts as Alan-One climbs back in and starts untangling blankets. Rinzler looks at the substance—brown, smelling of something rich and sweet even without concentration on User-senses—and up at Lora again.

“Told you he wouldn’t just drink it,” Alan-One says, huffs a laugh, and Rinzler stares at him in turn. The User has settled on his back, arms crossed behind his head, and gives him a rueful look. “I think it’s better for all of us involved if we spend the night here, huh? You should drink that before it gets cold.”

“It’s called hot chocolate,” Lora supplies, manipulating a switch that turns on a light source near the platform and crossing the room to use the other switch. The room’s light fades to a dim, gold glow that has nothing to do with the administrator’s circuit-color.

Still puzzled, Rinzler tries a sip. The warmth helps the shivering. User-sensors aren’t much help parsing the substance, registering that same intense sweetness, a hint of bitterness adding a strange depth, and something else that isn’t quite familiar. He tries another mouthful, using Lora’s injunction to go slowly as a chance to analyze properly. It coats his mouth, overwhelming sensors for the moments it takes to let the residue of each swallow dissolve and disappear. Memory tags draw up feelings of wellbeing, associations with healing emotional distress that are purely from the imported tags from his translation through the Portal. Even without the tags, though, Rinzler can feel the warmth easing the shudders, sound easing into something lower and slower, more like the noise Zap makes when contented.

He is bemused when he discovers the mug is empty and Lora has somehow settled on the platform too, leaving him sandwiched between the Users. _His_ Users. She takes the empty cup from him and sets it on the table near the platform, switches off the light. Alan-One shifts to give them more room, reaching across Rinzler to run his fingers along Lora’s arm as she yawns and curls up against his front.

“Night,” Lora says sleepily, her smile luminous in the dark.

“Mm.. night,” Alan-One rumbles at his back.

Rinzler breathes a low sigh, still _purring_ , and closes his eyes.


	6. 0101

Rinzler tugged halfheartedly at the safety strap in the User-transport— _car_ —and finally managed to get it into a position in which it was _not_ cutting into his shoulder. From the driver’s position, Alan tapped on the controls, fidgeting with the restlessness Rinzler felt but did not show. There was an extra undercurrent of nervousness to the proceedings, despite that he had been strapped into the car and brought along for small tasks— _errands_ —a few times before in the Users’ commitment to ensuring he was not left alone.

It was _irritating_ , this beta-bittiness that they seemed to think he possessed, but he could outlast the _test_. There were no lapses in his waking behavior, not even when dreams made him want to _bite_ again, to draw clear lines between shattered memory of recoding and reality. He _obeyed_ , he did not make the ridiculous demands of Sam_Flynn and Roy and even _Zap_. His tasklist had grown to several small chores, all performed without complaint and _perfectly_ , and a few self-appointed things that invariably stirred bemusement when his Users _swore_ the coffeemaker hadn’t been set or the kettle left empty or that there were no clean mugs or Zap hadn’t been fed yet when they went to bed.

That it was no trouble, either, was something he kept to himself.

Lora was talking into the broadcast peripheral— _the phone_ —with someone, the reason for the delay. Music and Alan’s restless drumming made it impossible to hear what was being said, but body-language changed and Lora finally opened the door with her expression full of regret.

“You two will have to go on without me. They need me at work—Hal’s robots are running amok and we have to keep them out of mischief in the storage area,” she said, regret edging into something almost eager as she spoke.

“We can wait, if it’s that important,” Alan said, but Lora reached across to take his hand before he could remove the safety harness.

“Rinzler needs clothes of his own, and we’ve already put it off too long,” she said.

“Are you sure you have to go?”

“Alan. Hal’s _robots_ are running _amok_.”

“ _Oh_.” Rinzler watched the comprehension dawn, reflected in the mirror at the car’s front. Lora grinned at him and leaned the rest of the way in to give her counterpart—they could _be_ nothing else, the display tugging an old _ache_ deep beyond the partition in his memory—a kiss on the cheek.

“Look at it this way. You two can bond, and we won’t have to worry about Sam risking his life with obsolete equipment.”

“No complaining if Rinzler comes back looking like a cowboy,” Alan said.

“Maybe he’ll surprise you. I’ll see you two tonight. If I’m late I’ll cook on Thursday.”

“Good luck,” Alan said, and the door swung shut with finality before Lora ducked back inside the dwelling to fetch her own vehicle. “We’ll all need it.”

Rinzler watched the path they took, recording the turns and stops idly as they traveled along transport channels crowded with Users and their vehicles. It was slow going, it always was, and this path seemed especially full of traffic as Alan-One approached a large, box-like structure surrounded by vehicles and with a constant flow of Users streaming in and out. Most of the outbound Users pushed hand-carts piled with packages, some of which matched those in the house Rinzler occupied.

So _this_ was how Users requisitioned supplies from their system.

Alan-One settled the car in a storage slot and beckoned him to follow. Rinzler took his accustomed place three steps behind and one to the right, observing all he could out of the corners of his eyes even as he kept his gaze pointed along their trajectory. He had never seen so many Users in one place, the crush _almost_ like that of the system, and the differences in size and render and ornamentation left him with more confusion than data on their possible roles or functions. It was also cold outside the car, part of the persistent damp chill in the air that left him wishing just a bit that Alan walked a little faster and grateful for the blast of warm-dry air that greeted them as they entered the structure.

“Think we’re going to need a cart,” Alan muttered, taking a scrap of paper from a pocket and scanning what was written on it. Lora had attacked with a length of what looked like string, marked off with numbers, earlier that morning and made notations on the paper. The cart was presented without comment, and Rinzler took the control bar without hesitating.

Inside the structure was filled with _things_ , and it took a great deal of concentration to resist the urge to stop and _stare_ , to follow and keep track of Alan’s movements. It appeared to be fairly straightforward requisitioning, even if the _scale_ was overwhelming, fully-realized items displayed instead of sample templates for download. Items resembling Lora’s part of the _laundry_ gave way to garments similar to those he and Alan used, and that was where the User stopped them and scowled at the scrap of paper again.

“Hope you didn’t have plans. We’re gonna need a little of everything,” Alan said, expression going steely as he pocketed the paper scrap.

He was _not lying_.

First came the packages, full of under-layers that provided insulation against cold or rough-textured outer garments. Like so much else, their purpose was straightforward with application of a little calculation, but the _iterations_ … And beyond the baffling redundancy of so many subtly-different _options_ was Alan-One’s insistence on lining them all up and _watching_ , expectant. The Users did it frequently, the purpose of the _test_ confusing and obscure, because why did it _matter_ when they controlled all input? Rinzler worked to keep the exasperated frown off his face as he stared at the option-set, unable to completely shake the vague feeling that no matter what he picked, it would be _wrong_. Black and white were good, no encoded allegiance or function colors to confuse things in this system of Users. No ornamentation either—he was not a decorative presence, no matter how many times in the past Clu had used him as such. Likewise, nothing that could potentially restrict movement. Touch, though…

The User insisted _he_ pick among the option-sets. If Rinzler selected for possible warmth or softness tertiary to other concerns, wasn’t that within the parameters? Alan didn’t seem upset by the long processing delay or the final selections, and simply added extra copies of Rinzler’s selections and steered them both into the forest of individual garments.

If anything, he looked vaguely sad.

Rinzler was not forced to choose again. Instead he followed behind, watching Alan puzzle between the bewildering options, wondering idly at the meaning of the words imprinted on many of the garments, and occasionally running his fingers along the fabrics, matching visual and tactile data for lack of anything better to do. An impressive collection of things ended up in the cart, though Rinzler was not sure if it would qualify him for “looking like a cowboy” or not. None of it, he noted, looked quite like the sort of garments that Alan preferred, though there appeared to be analogs present. Perhaps this was an indication of function, here? Rinzler was still very much _unassigned_.

The entire operation was straightforward, almost dully so. Another tutorial? The Users had defaulted to _showing_ rather than telling him how to do things many millicycles ago.

“Huh.. they’re still selling these?” Alan said softly, drawing Rinzler’s attention from his comparison of the various garment types and their possible function correlations. One wall was made of graphics displays, each corresponding to a garment in storage, much more like the displays of outfitters in the Grid than anything else he had seen. And one of the graphics—

The tetramino design was intimately familiar, even if the _color_ was _wrong_. His identifier. _His_.

Rinzler’s grip on the cart’s handrail tightened until his fingers ached with the strain. Alan tugged the cart, shuttling them by, but Rinzler couldn’t quite tear his gaze away and after a moment, he let the cart go.

 _Tron_ , the graphic proclaimed. There was no Tron. _None_ , and why would anyone want to emulate the failure who had died easily at Clu’s hand—

Only. Hadn’t—

_Scream all you like, Tron._

Rinzler backed away, eyes shut tight against the painful flare of restrictive coding that _didn’t come_ , and ran into the display behind him. _His_ identifier. _He_ was Tron—Rinzler— _Tron_ — _Rinzler_ and he could barely breathe around the tightness in his chest as memory tags reasserted themselves, a chain of recall locking into place. Then he was moving before he was consciously aware of it, anything to put distance between the impossibility and the memory that pushed defiantly into active processing.

Tron was _dead_. Clu had killed him, _broken_ him. Broken him and put together the pieces again into _Rinzler_ , leashed and bound and perfected. Flynn had betrayed him, left him, just as Clu had said… and Clu had betrayed him, broke him, just as Clu had always wanted. And _now_ he felt the phantom ache of change spreading and overwriting from a dock that was no longer there, the awareness tugging in his nightmares slotting in flawlessly, reading _true_ , and _now_ he felt user-heartbeat thrumming so hard he was certain he was malfunctioning.

He had come to a stop _elsewhere_ , back pressed defensively against a rare stretch of blank wall and surrounded by inert shapes of Users twisted into grotesque forms or left nothing but bones. Rinzler— _Tron/Rinzler/Tron_ —Rinzler gasped for breath, tried to calm the feeling of _run-run-run_ that thrummed just under his shell. He felt a breathless laugh bubble from the fractured-feeling place. A horror among other horrors.

Was that why _they_ kept him? Were they hoping he would be Tron for them again?

“Rinzler?”

Alan-One.

Rinzler obeyed the unspoken order, willing his shaking form back into motion and triangulating the worried call.

“Where were you? What happened? Are you all right?” Alan-One’s hands were on his arms the moment he was in reach, giving him a little shake as the questions tumbled out.

“I—what _was_ that? You could have gotten lost!”

Rinzler watched, really watched this time, the emotions play across his User’s face, reflect deep in the blue eyes that no longer matched his rust-brown ones. Strange to see the frantic edge in his own thoughts reflected there, however imperfectly. Less strange to feel the almost-damaging grip and the faint trembling it communicated.

“Dammit, Rinzler… You can tell me,” Alan said.

Was the concern he saw there for him, or for the ghost of Tron that he represented?

“User,” Rinzler breathed, hating the way the word skipped, and the way that it had nothing, this time, to do with the persistent vocal glitch.

Did it _matter_?

“You know what? Let’s just go home.” The User’s— _his User’s_ —voice was just as shaky.

Rinzler let him steer them out. Passively observed the way Alan-One interacted with the supply User, the way they exchanged tokens for the contents of the cart. Wordlessly assisted in putting things into the car’s storage space.

Alan-One kept one hand in contact with him the whole time.

Perhaps he wasn’t the only one suddenly feeling like he was only so much ghost-data.


	7. Coda: Enchanted

Lora skinned out of her coat, humming softly to herself. It had taken hours to finish chasing down all of Hal’s little robots, but they were all finally accounted for, cloaking devices and all. Even better, she was fairly sure that all the running and crawling around meant she wasn’t going to need to find time to go to the gym that week.

If a certain advanced digitizing laser had disappeared from storage in the confusion, well, it wasn’t like anybody _checked_ the boxes as long as all the RFID chips were in place.

The TV was running in the living room, and she recognized the strains of Amy Adams starting the big musical number in _Enchanted_. Alan had taken her out to see it for their twenty-first wedding anniversary, reminder of how he’d proposed in a fluster after she’d dragged him to see _The Black Cauldron_ right before her move to Washington. He’d never admit it, but she had a feeling it was his favorite.

Smiling, she peeked into the living room. Alan and Rinzler were both on the couch, wrapped up in quilts and distractedly nibbling on a half-demolished bowl of popcorn. There was a stack of DVDs on the coffee table, and from the doorway Lora could see some of the titles— _WALL-E,_ _Mary Poppins, Tarzan, My Neighbor Totoro_ —along with what looked like a couple wrappers from her chocolate stash. Alan looked half-asleep, but Rinzler looked away from the old men dancing with sunflowers as she came closer. They were leaning on each other, and Alan re-focused a few moments later.

“Shopping was that bad, huh?” Lora said, wrapping one arm around each of her boys and giving them a squeeze. Rinzler stiffened a little, aloof as a cat, before he relaxed into it, and Alan gave her a hello kiss on the cheek.

“Horrifying. Chili all right for dinner?”

“Sounds perfect. Is there room for me?”

“Always.”

They forgot about actually cooking, though the topic did come up in the middle of _101 Dalmations_. Somehow, though, it just didn’t seem important. Not with Alan holding her close and Rinzler curled up on his side with his head in her lap.


	8. 0110

Sunshine glittered in the leaves, flashes of color gleaming off the droplets left over from the morning’s fog on the deep green and the pale yellow flowers of the towering bush—rose bush—in the back of the yard. Rinzler ran his fingertips over the smooth, slightly waxy softness of a nearby leaf and shared a small smile with the plant. Sunshine. Leaves. Fog. Rose. The designations turned over in his mind and fit, and the smile turned self-satisfied as he teased a water droplet off the end of the leaf he was touching. There was a familiar sweet scent in the air that came from the flowers—also named rose, according to the label on the bottle of it he had discovered in storage in his assigned space. Rinzler touched a nearby flower too, fully unfurled, and felt the velvet-softness of the petals and the way the edges felt just a little slack.

“Do you remember what to do?”

 _Lora_. She was behind and a step to the left, holding the pair of shears from his first day. He nodded to her and accepted the tool, running fingers carefully along the green stem of the flower he had just investigated, feeling the sharp tips of thorns and the low-grade prickliness along the stem’s length. _There_ was the junction, and with a sure little snip the bloom was separated from the main plant. There may have been a small irony in that, as he handed the flower to Lora for inspection.

“Good,” she said, the wideness of her smile not quite matched to the simplicity of the task. “With your help the bushes should be done today.”

It was a small chore, like all his other duties around the house, but the Users had been a little strange since the _slip_ at the store.

Rinzler made very sure to keep further fragments of memory and their surfacing to _himself_. They did not make for a very satisfying whole anyway, though the small shards that matched _Yori_ were a definite improvement on some of his other dreams. He was not yet sure what to make of the strange, dusk-hued world and the program who had been written by Alan-One’s counterpart that occupied sections of his memory, though he knew why the filepaths had been destroyed. Rinzler could only wait, now, and allow self-repair to do its job. The tags became clearer slowly, his sleep cycle kept shorter than the night in uneasy truce with the nightmares that sometimes sparked instead.

That was how Lora set him this small _test_. Alan-One had explained User-style information storage and retrieval since Rinzler was not authorized to use the calls in the house yet, giving him a small stack of references to peruse. Lora had seen him looking at one archive filled with pictures similar to the plants in the garden, and soon enough another stack of more specialized archives had been relocated from Lora’s office to _his_ space. The archives led him to pay more attention when Lora had him weeding and doing other tasks outside, showing him the various steps to caring for the plants that the archives had hinted at. It was more tutorial, but unlike the rest it was _physical_ , challenging strength and endurance and fine motor control that he had been missing since his arrival. It was also very _unlike_ his written function—now his hands brought care or healing to something alive, rather than taking that life away. There was a satisfying level of symmetry to that.

Now this. Cull the spent flowers so the rose could rest over the wet season, so that there could be more blooms later.

The rose looked like it had been the victim of benign neglect for some time—most of the blooms were similar to the one that he had removed. Without checking behind him, for a task _set_ was a task to be _completed_ before further input requests, Rinzler searched out another to clip away. That flower was dropped to the grass at his feet, to be collected and added to the pile of garden waste that, through some mechanism he was still working on discovering, was cycled back as raw material. After a few more tired blooms joined the first, soft footsteps announced Lora’s departure for another portion of the garden.

Sunshine was _warm_ against Rinzler’s back like the charge in an energy pool, and since he was unobserved he let the little pleased-purr noise play while he worked. The rose-smell rolled over him, and hearing picked up nothing but the sounds of birds communicating and the more distant noise of the street on the other side of the house. He could, he decided, be content with this choice of new function.

The shrill beeping of the phone in the house cut across the quiet, and Lora clattered up to the deck and in to answer it. Her progress through the house echoed clearly through the open windows and the screen on the door as she snatched the phone from its cradle. Rinzler paused, closing his eyes to further sharpen his hearing, and listened as best he could. Sometimes his Users underestimated how sensitive his hearing really was.

“Gone? Where could she have—“ There was a pause, the other party male and agitated enough for vocals to carry over in a blur of sound. “Did you call Alan? All right, all right… I can come help. Just stay calm. She has the phone you gave her, right?” Another agitated noise, breaking higher-pitched. “Phone, bus pass, and your credit card, huh? That makes this easy. I’ll come over. Call Roy. I bet he can get started tracing her. Uh-huh. Be right there. Hold on. _You’re welcome_.”

The phone was replaced with an audible click, and Rinzler resumed clipping flowers as Lora proceeded back to the deck. Her tone had sounded more exasperated than agitated, but he was reluctant to drop the task and follow her on whatever mysterious errand the caller had asked her for. He _would_ —Lora was much more agreeable company in such situations than Clu—but it made a slow-waking corner of his processes chafe.

“Rinzler, will you be all right for a couple of hours?” Lora said instead, off-script enough to make him almost drop the shears. His expression stayed schooled as he turned and nodded, head tilted a little in inquiry. “Just do what you can with the flowers. If you get too hot or tired go back inside, and we’ll get the rest when I’m back, all right? This shouldn’t take long.”

“Acknowledged,” Rinzler said, feeling a faint smile tug his lips even though he could also hear a little _skip_ in his voice. He did not like hearing the persisting glitch’s lag on his words, but being left _alone_ was worth the annoyance.

“I’ll be back later. My number is by the phone if you need me. Alan showed you how to work that, right?” Another nod, and a small exertion of discipline not to roll his eyes. Lora flashed him a grin and disappeared back into the house, the sound of her transport starting and leaving coming soon after.

Rinzler eyed the rose bushes. Finishing the task would take a significant fraction of a millicycle. He almost _hummed_ as he resumed it.

Time-sense was not accurate in the User world. Rinzler measured his progress simply against what was left instead, and when he was down to three bushes needing to be culled there was a loud knocking against the fence. He paused, unsure of the protocol since his Users had taken pains to insulate him from having to interact with anyone else, and thanks to that pause he caught sight of a flash of black hair when the intruder hopped to try and see over the fence.

“Hello?”

The query mapped to ID instantly, and Rinzler pressed back into the bushes—better opportunity for ambush—before conscious processing could catch up. The ISO. _Quorra_. She had been with Flynn and Sam in the lightflyer, her departure from the Grid the last coherent entry in his logfiles before he had been brought _here_.

She didn’t wait to see if there was a response, either. A short scuffling noise and she ran up the house’s exterior wall and vaulted over the fence, landing in a deep crouch. Rinzler ignored the faint warning prick of thorns, glad of his hiding place as he watched her. She, too, had adopted a more User-like appearance, electing jeans and a gray and green striped shirt instead of the formal configurations he had tentatively linked to having an important User-function. Quorra remained half-crouched as she surveyed the garden, frowned as she took in the evidence of Rinzler’s work.

“I know you’re here. Come out,” she said, proceeding on a straight vector for Rinzler’s position.

Decision gate. Did he obey his only standing order in regard to the ISO, or should he gather more data first?

“This _is_ the right address…” she continued, frowning and altering course to circle warily around instead. “Look, I’m not going to do anything to you. I just wanted to meet you. I—I’m from the Grid too. I wasn’t with Clu, though. There’s no way he could have followed me here. I just want to—“

“I know who you _are_ ,” Rinzler finally replied, faint irritation from the half-condescending speech compounding with the glitch to make the words growl threateningly. It was as good an opening as any to step out of the shelter of the leaves and cross his arms as he watched her.

“ _Tron_?” Quorra said breathlessly, freezing in place with an expression of _hope_ that was almost painful. “You’re—you made it?”

“Not Tron. _Rinzler_.” He was forced to concede a little admiration when she didn’t flinch or step back.

“No wonder they wouldn’t let me come here,” Quorra muttered, and blew a lock of her hair out of her eyes with a sigh that turned sharp. “What? Not going to derezz me?”

“This isn’t the _Grid_ ,” Rinzler said, and it was true enough for the moment.

“I didn’t know that made a difference to Clu’s _pet_.”

“Clu is dead. _Deleted_.”

The intelligence seemed to draw Quorra up short, rebellion fading into something more worried. “You’re sure? I hoped—“

“It went according to simulation. Mutual deletion and energy release that destroyed the _Rectifier_ ,” Rinzler said, shrugging, “Clu was wrong. My logs end with the Portal cycling.”

“Wrong about what?”

“He didn’t think Flynn would do it. End his own runtime to stop him.”

Quorra laughed, a bark of sound that had no humor in it, and let herself settle on the grass. “So it’s just you and me. The entire _system_ , and it’s just _you_ and _me_.”

Rinzler snorted—the observation was so obvious as to be absurd—and turned back to his task. Quorra was a worthy opponent… but she did not represent a _threat_. If that were the case, combat would have initiated already. Quorra seemed to have come to the same conclusion about _him_ , if her more relaxed pose was an indication. She also didn’t seem eager to _move_ , letting silence fill the space between them as he collected the tired flowers. He finished with the bush and picked up the armful of spent blooms. Quorra was on her back, watching the clouds, and turned to observe him.

“What are you doing?”

“Culling flowers,” he said.

“Why? They look fine.”

“It weakens the plant to leave them. This way there are more flowers later.”

“Is that what you thought you were doing in the Grid?” she said, the bitterness back but less sharp, less acid than her first insult.

“No. My targets were at Clu’s order.”

“And what, you just went along with it? Did you _enjoy_ it?”

“It was never personal. To him you were virus; the rebels were corrupted. He set my definitions,” Rinzler said.

“Just like that.”

“The Users did the same, before,” he said, feeling the knowing without quite locating the exact reference in a way that said _memory gap_. “It was my function.”

“You expect that to make it all _better_?”

“No. But you came. You’re still _here_.”

Quorra sat up, another humorless giggle escaping her control. Instead of continuing to the next bush, Rinzler sat beside her, keeping just out of arm’s length. Her eyes narrowed, head tilted to the side and down. Rinzler spread his hands, let them rest idle on his knees, and nodded. She snorted, but her expression softened.

“I am, aren’t I?”

“They don’t comprehend _you_ , either,” Rinzler said, and knew it was true before Quorra nodded.

“Sam said we’re supposed to change the world. I don’t see how. It’s bigger than I imagined it was. When it sounded like there was another program here…”

“They’re looking for you.”

“Let them look. I evaded _you_ for a kilocycle.”

“They do underestimate us,” Rinzler said. Quorra’s laugh this time felt genuine, and she smiled a little. That was not surprising. What was surprising was that he felt himself smiling _back_.


	9. Coda: Bloom

Quorra hummed to herself as she searched among the odd glasses and bottles in Sam Flynn’s living space, looking for one that would harmonize with the flowers resting on the small counter in the kitchen. She would have to clip them regardless, as a fast search of the Internet had shown, and add water. There didn’t seem anything really appropriate, at least not without having to clip the stems down, and after a moment spent glaring at the shelves she ducked to look in the recycling. Sam had spent an evening trying to teach her about User intoxicants after she discovered a bottle of wine in the fridge. She still didn’t know what the appeal was—refined energy _tasted_ a lot better and, judging by the way Sam carried on the next morning, didn’t leave behind _headaches_. About the only thing in common were the intoxicating effects.

Speaking of—there was the bottle. It was clear glass, but a bit on the long side. Under it were abandoned beer bottles, the glass tinted a lovely green color that matched the stems. Quorra fished one out and gave it a cautious sniff. Sometimes Sam didn’t rinse the containers going into the recycling, and _her_ sense of smell seemed a bit more acute than _his_. Nothing trying to decompose in there.

She snuck a glance at the blooms as she gave the bottle a little squirt of dish soap and snickered quietly to herself. Well. An intoxicant bottle was maybe sort of appropriate after all.

The large door to the living space opened with the thunk of the motor that controlled it. Quorra smiled brightly as Sam dejectedly walked his motorcycle inside.

“Hello, Sam,” she called, shaking now-soapy water in the bottle and starting the tedious process of rinsing it out. The flowers probably wouldn’t like soapy water any more than she did.

“Quorra? Q, what the _hell_ , we’ve been looking for you all day!” Sam said after a quite satisfying pause that she was starting to think meant the User equivalent of a glitch moment.

“We?” she said, batting her eyes in mock-innocence.

“Me, Roy, Lora.. hell, even Alan left work early. What happened? I got up and you just weren’t here!”

“I wanted to have a look around,” Quorra said, eyeing the interior of the bottle. Were those still soap bubbles clinging to the inside?

“You could have taken one of us!”

“You were busy,” she said, and she could see an echo of Flynn in the way Sam waved his arms and managed a tired little circle of the coffee table before collapsing on the couch in defeat. “It was fine. The public transit system is very easy to navigate, though I don’t know why you won’t let me have the keys to your jeep. You _know_ I can drive it.”

“You could have gotten lost? Or mugged? Or, you know, all those other reasons why I asked you not to _do_ that?”

“If I thought the environment was hazardous, I would have called a partner,” Quorra said, and this time she _did_ give in and roll her eyes. “As you can see, I’m fine. It was a lovely day. And you can tell your associate I didn’t appreciate him putting a tracking program into the phone you gave me.”

“Q, This isn’t the Grid,” Sam said, though his expression and body language radiated confusion, not the well meaning I-know-better she knew from his father. How many times had she had this argument? She’d honestly lost track, and it took a moment to avoid just automatically running the script.

“I know this isn’t the Grid. I wouldn’t have found these there.. or at least, not this _color_ ,” she said, showing Sam the blooms with a grin. “And because this isn’t the Grid, I’m safer. Anonymous. You said yourself that the population here is around the size of Tron City’s… and here I’m _not_ _special_.”

As far as she could tell, she was a User among Users now. She bled. She had to eat. She slept, and dreamed now, the way Flynn had sometimes described. She had to shower, and _smelled_ sometimes, and had to deal with all the other less-pleasant aspects of being a User… and she _wasn’t_ looking forward to seeing if something called a period applied to her User-world shell. Just one out of _billions_ , a number that was shocking even though _she_ remembered the way the system used to teem with programs.

Sam seemed about to say something in response, paused for a _long_ while, and then laughed, a little embarrassed maybe, and let himself flop comfortably on the couch. It was a pose that said I-surrender, and the wry grin just confirmed it. Argument over.

“I think I know what you mean,” Sam said, and watched as Quorra finished setting the roses in the bottle and placed it on the tiny kitchen table. “So what’s so funny about the color? Two-toned roses are pretty common. I think Lora has a few bushes of that pink-orange kind in her yard.”

Quorra smothered another giggle with her hand and fetched a couple bottles of water from the fridge before joining Sam on the couch. She could afford to be magnanimous.

“So I suppose _interfacing_ never made it into any of the stories you were told as a beta?” she began. Sam groaned and covered his face.

“TMI! TMI!”

“So when two programs love each other _very much_ …”


	10. 0111

Grumbling faintly at his reflection, made watery by steam clinging to the mirror, Rinzler hunched down in the layers of User clothing he’d selected for the day and opened the bathroom door. Immediately, cool, wet air infiltrated the space and chilled bare toes and his uncovered head. Neither of his Users were back in the private areas of the house, so he let himself have the luxury of making a face at the cold as he trudged back to his room to find socks. Perhaps the purpose behind “airing the house out” was some sort of subtle _test_ , the sound of rain outside clearly audible through screened windows. The only consolation was that _Zap_ seemed about as pleased with the current environmental configuration as he was, especially if the tail swishing under his bed was an indication. Rinzler’s windows, at least, remained firmly shut.

The environmental configuration— _weather_ —also meant that Quorra was unlikely to visit and pester him some more about leaving with her to explore the city. While _she_ might revel in the chaos that her travels caused the Users, _he_ was no ISO guaranteed User favor, and he would not repay their indulgence with worry and disobedience of the few orders they issued. Even if it meant the day would likely consist primarily of sitting on the couch, since rain generally left garden chores off-limits.

Dressing finished, Rinzler paused to select an archive— _book_ —to study in the likely event the Users were busy. He was still only partway through the stack Lora had given him, the tutorial slow since undefined terms kept cropping up that needed examined before he could proceed.

Perhaps if he hadn’t lingered between two of the archives, he would have missed it. Footsteps—Alan-One’s and almost as stealthy as _his_ —sounded in the hall. Quietly, Rinzler set the books aside and crept out to see what his User was up to. Alan-One was poised near the door, dressed for running. It was too late in the day for the morning run, and besides Alan-One tended to avoid it on wet days with complaints to Lora that his joints hurt. The Users did not depart through the front door if they had urgent business—the cars used a separate egress. He was also, Rinzler noticed, typing something into his phone.

Likely it was none of his business and he should go back to retrieving a book. On the _other_ hand… he had earned standing permission to join Alan-One on runs around the neighborhood, and it seemed to make Lora happy when he accompanied his User.

Message completed, Alan-One pulled the hood of his outer layer up and slipped through the door, making sure to close it quietly. After a few moments, Rinzler did the same, careful to let Alan-One slip out of sight temporarily around the corner of the block before following at an easy lope. There was _something_ clandestine going on, and he did not intend to _stumble_ into the middle of it.

Rain drummed down, sluicing over the street and gurgling through drains and out of gutters in small rivers over the sidewalk. There was little traffic, as most of the occupants of the neighborhood had departed to attend to their functions and those left behind stayed within shelter like any sensible program might. It was quiet, save for the constant drip and the muted swish of vehicles passing by somewhere else. It would be almost pleasant except for the chill, brought on the damp breeze that stole warmth from uncovered skin until it tingled faintly. Cooling was supposed to be a good thing, User bodies far more prone to overheat than a program’s, but it still _felt_ too much like teetering on the edge of shutdown from power drain.

Alan-One’s trajectory seemed to be following the usual path, and the halfway mark was a small repository for food. After a few microcycles spent confirming the route, Rinzler cut away from the sidewalk, taking a more direct path even if it meant scrambling over fences and through plant life, the occasional puddle of mud sucking at his feet before he scaled the last fence and landed in the vehicle storage for the repository. There were a few vehicles in slots—a couple of cars and something that looked very similar to a lightcycle. Rinzler ducked behind a car and waited, and true to prediction Alan-One came puffing in a few moments later.

The repository seemed like a better choice than the rain, especially when his User didn’t appear again in short order.

Inside was the usual maze of small aisles, tinny audio playing unfamiliar music, and a graying User who smiled and nodded when she recognized Rinzler. Anomalous were the voices—Alan-One’s and Sam_Flynn’s, coming from the back where there was a small seating area. They had arranged a meeting? _Why_?

Perhaps following hadn’t been such a good idea, but the decision gate was already behind him. Better to focus on _not being seen_. Besides.. for some reason the environment in the building was set to _cool_ and he was starting to shiver under the damp clothes.

“I just don’t know what the hell to do…”

Voices. _Sam_. Rinzler slid behind the cover of a drink dispenser and listened.

“I’m not really sure what I can tell you. Lora and I never figured out how to nail _your_ feet to the floor,” Alan-One said, tone laced with humor.

“Oh god shut up and do _not_ start talking about karma.”

“Well there’s more where that came from if it _is_ karma…”

“ _Alaaaaaan_.”

“There isn’t really much we can do. She finds every tracker in her phone, and short of staying with her twenty-four-seven there’s no way to keep her from leaving your fancy garage. You’re going to have to move out of it eventually anyway. It might be all right for a few days at a time, but winter’s coming and that thing is _not_ insulated. Maybe you should have Quorra scout you a new place to live. It _might_ be boredom. Or, you know, a cry for attention.”

So the Users weren’t so indulgent of Quorra’s escapades after all. Rinzler frowned a little to himself. She didn’t treat him like a fragile beta, and if her visits were curtailed… but the Users were still talking.

“You know I can’t leave Encom alone. We just got things on track with the board and there’s still a whole mess of legal crap and trying to sell the new business model and—“

“And you should still take time off, and I don’t mean just Sundays. Junior’s been threatening to chloroform you and carry you out, you know. Something about you being too damn hyperactive.”

“He’s too scrawny to manage. Besides, I can handle it. And then once things are settled we can go through and see if there’s anything to salvage off the backup, maybe import some help once we get some hardware set up…”

“ _Sam_. The Grid will _keep_.”

“I know. I guess. I _just_ …”

“Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“You know how we made that promise that I’d never compare you to your father?”

“Christ, Alan, I was _fifteen_. It’s _fine_. Ancient history even.”

“I’m breaking it now. Sam, _don’t do this_. Don’t be like him.. not this way. It’s how we lost him. I know that now, and I don’t want to lose _you_ too. Take some time off from Encom _and_ the Grid. They’ll still be there when you’re back.”

There was a long break in the flow of words. Belatedly, Rinzler realized that eventually he was going to have to requisition something, or the staff was likely to get suspicious, and he’d attract attention. There were resource distribution tokens in his pockets, left over from yesterday’s run. Sidling over to another aisle, he started counting them and comparing them to the listings on the displays. Maybe he had enough for hot chocolate?

“What am I supposed to do, Alan?” Sam asked, voice so small that Rinzler almost didn’t catch it, “I.. he.. and _Quorra_ … I don’t know.”

“Take it a day at a time, I guess. It’s what we do with Rinzler,” Alan-One said, sighing heavily, and it took _work_ to suppress a flinch at his tone.

“I’m surprised nobody’s been shanked yet.”

“No… I almost _wish_ —“

“No. Alan. _Trust me_ , you don’t.”

Rinzler scowled at the tokens in his hand. There were enough to requisition what he wanted. Alan-One had walked him through the process yesterday. With the conversation changed… He found he didn’t want to listen in so much after all. Even if it seemed to be a null topic for the moment—they started in on something to do with Encom and personnel in the section—listening to _his_ User _discussing_ him like that pulled on feelings of sick shame, a faint ghost from the memories that were under repair.

He retrieved the chocolate, though the warmth failed to seep past his fingers as he went to trade tokens to the clerk.

“Checking up on your father?” she said, smiling as she tapped at the interface that handled the transaction. Rinzler blinked at her in confusion, head tilting to the side. He had heard that designation before, but it made no sense in this context, and the clerk continued before he could begin to formulate the question. “Dr. Bradley and Mr. Flynn do this all the time. Why… I remember once they both staggered in here at eleven o’clock and stayed almost ‘til dawn. I think the manager would have had a fit if they hadn’t kept buying coffee.”

“Yes,” Rinzler finally said when he got an expectant look from the User. To forestall more strange conversation, he handed the requisite tokens over before the results of the device’s calculations could be read to him.

“Well… I’m glad you dropped by. You take care, all right?”

“I will.” The clerk beamed at him despite the faint hitch of the glitch in his words.

Rinzler stepped out into the rain, the cup cradled in his hands, but instead of starting the walk back to the house, which would likely result in Lora fussing at him, he found a dry spot under an awning and slowly drank the chocolate. There was a variable missing, some _unknown_ User parameter that was upsetting his User but that neither of them would _mention_. If it was a _test_ , it was a fiendishly difficult one… Clu had restricted independent operation and severely punished those times he had elected to operate without orders anyway. And now… _what_? He couldn’t run a diagnostic, didn’t know how much of that coding was left in him. He scowled at a puddle.

There was a small commotion at the door. _Sam_Flynn_. There were no standing orders regarding the User, not since Clu had checked his disk and found it wanting. He also felt no internal twist to obey as he did with Alan and Lora, no core-deep recognition that this User _owned_ him. Perhaps… perhaps a small _test_ of his own was in order.

Rinzler finished the last sips of the chocolate and quietly disposed of the container before approaching the not-a-lightcycle that was apparently the younger Flynn’s choice of vehicle. The User was swearing quietly at it, vocabulary unfamiliar but the tone clear to read. Smirking, Rinzler sidled even closer. He would have only a little time before Alan-One emerged into the storage area.

“Goddamn hunk of— _oh holy shit_!”

The User’s yelp was satisfyingly high. Rinzler grinned at Sam’s obvious discomfort.

“User,” he said, letting the sound roll out. Sam flinched a little, eyes darting back to the door.

“Ah… oh boy.. uh… Alan’s inside?”

“I _know_.” If anything, the User turned paler at the declaration.

“Then what the _hell_ are you—“

“Sam? Everything all right?”

“Your murderbot followed you!” Sam said, his voice still breaking subtly. Rinzler schooled his features, though it was difficult to suppress the faint pleasure at the exchange.

“He’s not a murderbot,” Alan-One said, settling one arm around Rinzler’s shoulders. “Must’ve thought we were going for a run.”

“Alan-One,” Rinzler said, nodding acknowledgement. Sam’s gaze darted between them, suspicion written clear on his face.

“Whatever, Alan,” Sam finally said before he kicked the vehicle and its power source roared to life.

“See you on Tuesday, all right? I meant it about tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah. Be nice or I’ll sic Q on _you_ the next time you decide to work late.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Watch me,” Sam said, casting a last nervous glance at Rinzler before he eased the vehicle away. Alan-One’s arm prevented Rinzler from stepping to follow, though Sam’s expression said that such a move might trigger his flight. _Interesting_.

“All right, Rinzler. Let’s head back. Lora’s going to have both our heads at this rate,” Alan-One said once Sam’s vehicle had disappeared into the rain. Rinzler nodded and dutifully followed after.

He would find a way to pass this test, too. He didn’t like the sadness that lurked in his User’s gaze.


	11. Coda: Meanwhile

“ _Tron_. Don’t you do this you fucking _cockroach_!”

With a frustrated whine, Edward Dillinger, Jr., put his head on his desk and silently counted to ten. Then he looked up at the monitor, which was still locked where it had been a few seconds ago.

“One of these days I’m going to figure out how to delete you, and I am going to _laugh my ass off_ when I do,” he said, flicking the monitor. The display remained the same—he’d tried to load up his work for the day from a stick and Tron wasn’t having any of it, preventing the files from having access to the local drive or the Encom intranet. He’d tried _three_ times, even over wifi on his tablet, and the _insane little glitch_ had headed off the files each time. Apparently there was something on the stick that he didn’t like, but Ed wasn’t ready to abandon three hours of overtime from last night.

_He_ … oh _god_ Ed was anthropomorphizing the damn thing again. Most of Encom’s remaining old guard tended to refer to Tron as a he, maybe a nod to the game franchise that bore Alan Bradley’s face, and Ed’s entire division tended to do it too like some kind of insane superstition. Tron was an it, an _it_ , a thirty-year-old firewall and probably the goose that laid the golden egg in terms of reliable profit generating, but that didn’t merit _person_ status. Not even if maybe Ed had a couple of vintage figures from the old cartoon series tucked among his reference books.

For one thing, the _real_ Tron was a hell of a lot more of a pain in the ass than the version in the cartoons. Fight for the Users, _sure_. Maybe on Saturday mornings, but lately the little bugger seemed to have made it some kind of mission to obstruct as much of Ed’s work as possible.

Rubbing at the start of a headache, Ed exited the window and pulled the stick. He was down to a few options, and most of them involved going upstairs and bothering Alan Bradley, the only user on the system that Tron would actually accept override commands from. Bradley, though, would insist on going over the damn stick before admitting that his firewall was having a glitch, and that would kill even more time he could be spending _working_.

“Fine. You win,” Ed muttered, dragging his laptop out of the drawer in his desk and loading the stick. The laptop was an isolated system, network card pulled so that he could fiddle with things at home without needing to worry about any of his software being hacked. Sometimes the most low-tech solution was the most secure. The stick booted fine, no complaints from the onboard security suite even though he’d installed updates by hand the night before. With a sigh, he started in on the patch he was working on for his _own_ security program.

He let the new experimental build run, scanning the laptop for problem files, and went back to his desktop to check up on his minions in the security section. The weekly dump of Tron’s definition records was proceeding smoothly, and despite Sam’s little prank a few months ago Encom OS 12 wasn’t having any major problems with security exploits, and notably fewer than 11 had at the same point in the development cycle.

The prototype program—nicknamed Lesk even though as an acronym it didn’t _quite_ work out—pinged out a report on the laptop. Humming to himself, Ed turned to the smaller screen and _stopped_.

“God _dammit_.”

Where Tron’s stop report had been vague, Lesk found a hidden logger on the stick. Ed swore again and opened up the offending file in its quarantine. It was a photo from his father’s last business trip to Singapore, which had been attached to an e-mail _totally_ not gloating about all the phones carrying just about anything _but_ Encom’s mobile OS. The logger had been cleverly hidden in the jpg itself, and had somehow managed to pass cleanly through about four different scans before landing on his tablet. Also cleanly. He was going to have to format the whole damn thing _and_ take the logger apart to find where it was supposed to be reporting, and thank every last transistor in the laptop that he never did anything _sensitive_ on the tablet… of course, that did explain why Tron had thrown a hissy fit over letting the tablet connect to the network until Ed had backed up and then wiped out its storage. _Great_. And he was anthropomorphizing the damn program again.

“Dammit, Dad,” Ed muttered before shutting the laptop down. Without a network connection the logger wasn’t going to work. No _real_ question of who was behind it—his father had been on his ass about joining Encom since he’d managed to score his first unpaid internship, and lately he’d been having completely fucking surreal Skype chats with the man that made it sound like whatever move Dillinger Systems was going to try to stomp on Encom’s market share, it was probably not going to be particularly legal. He had to go upstairs and talk to Bradley. This was getting into the realm of corporate espionage, and there weren’t many who were still around who actually _remembered_ the debacle that was nineties Encom.

Ed packed up the laptop, growling faintly to himself, and paused to lock his desktop. Tron’s report window was up, showing the final results of the latest defintions-dump, the week’s tally of attempts on the network, all the usual data that were supposed to cross Ed’s screen. There was a definite uptick in hack attempts, from a small constellation of IP addresses, and stop reports showing that Hardington and Mackey had also probably gotten a copy of the logger. The heuristic identification was already in the new definitions list. With an aggravated noise, he hit the buttons to send the computer into standby.

“Don’t get smug, cockroach,” Ed muttered as he watched the screen blink out.


	12. 1000

Rumbling to himself, Rinzler scanned the narrow aisle again, watching for signs of approach.

“Stop being paranoid. This is supposed to be _fun_ ,” Quorra said, voice muffled by the fact her nose was buried in a User archive. The hint of triumph was clear anyway. She had been walking a fine line between _rubbing it in_ and simple excitement since she had handed him a bus pass and dragged him out the door.

“You said this wouldn’t take long,” he said, crossing his arms against the persistent feeling of being _watched_ as he turned to observe the ISO nodding to herself and adding the archive to the impressive collection of them jammed into a bag. He was starting to doubt that the carrier would be able to maintain its integrity for very much longer. She had to know that trying to procure a copy of _everything_ in the depot on this trip would be impossible… right?

“And all the Users are at work. We have three more hours before we have to get the bus.” Quorra waved her free hand with a laugh, almost bouncing in place with a barely-restrained energy that _felt_ familiar even if the tag was missing. “I swear, we’ll get lunch in just a bit.”

Rinzler sighed, trailing after Quorra as she made a noise too high-pitched to be a squeal and changed course for a table practically groaning with archives decorated with something shiny. This was exactly what he had _known_ would happen, but after yet _another_ up-cycle spent listening to her bemoan how _bored_ she was and how she had _promised_ Sam_Flynn she wouldn’t go exploring without a partner… here he was. Watching her touch the covers of User-archives— _books_ —with an awed reverence that reminded him uncomfortably of memory fragments of an I/O tower in that distant, dusk-hued system that haunted his dreams. She finally picked up a volume— _Seven Novels_ by Jules Verne—and turned it over to examine the back.

“ _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_ ,” Quorra said, shaking her head and looking up at Rinzler. His expression must have shifted from its usual neutrality without his notice, because she looked down at the book and explained. “Flynn had a copy of _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_. I must have read it… oh, at least a thousand times before I turned off tracking on file access stats. It was so fascinating, all the adventures everyone had on the _Nautilus_ … even the giant monster seemed amazing. So much better than _our_ Sea.” She rubbed her thumb over the strange vehicle on the bottom of the cover and sighed, cradling the book to her chest. “I never knew he wrote more stories.”

Rinzler nodded once the words seemed to have run their course, tilting his head as he looked at the other books piled with the volume that Quorra had selected. Flynn must have given her access to those files as part of his general plan for the ISOs. The one that was breaking the system and initiated the Purge—but how much of that was _true_ and how much of that was Clu’s manipulation Rinzler was no longer certain. There were too many missing memory files, too much awareness of _all_ the things that were missing, to say for certain _how_ to approach his runtime in the Grid. More useful to focus on _here_ and _now_ and the challenge that this User world represented. More useful, then, to brush his fingertips lightly over Quorra’s arm, ending the sad loop that she seemed to have stuck herself in as she gazed, unseeing, at the table. She visibly shook it off and shot Rinzler an unreadable glance before heaving the bag onto the table to sort through the contents.

“You could take one, too,” she said, shuffling through titles— _The Daring Book for Girls, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, The Hunger Games, The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat_ —and chewing her lip as she set three volumes aside to make room for the new one.

“I couldn’t follow you back,” Rinzler pointed out, frowning a little at the copy of _The Elegant Universe_ that got left incongruously on the table. He picked it up with a sigh, mentally retracing their route through the depot so he could put it where it _belonged_.

“I wouldn’t _mind_ if you visited. It seems lopsided that I always come to you and never the other way around,” Quorra said, rolling her eyes at his scowl and taking the book. She led them back among the shelves after pointedly picking up the other two discards, neatly re-shelving the first amid colorful manuals helpfully labeled _crafts_. Gardening books were kept nearby, and Rinzler slowed his pace just a little to look at the covers as he passed. A few were familiar from Lora’s collection, but there was one featuring a collection of plants in a clear container on the cover that kept catching his attention. _How_ did the plants stay healthy in such an environment? He felt just a little sympathy for them, too much of his own memory block full of being trapped behind glass as well, waiting and waiting for Clu to call.

Quorra had gotten herself distracted by a shelf labeled poetry, flipping through one of the books with a determined expression. Rinzler _sighed_ and leaned against the bookcase, tilting his head back and closing his eyes for a moment while his hands twitched with the temptation to pick up ISO _and_ books and be _done_ with the errand already. How many circuits of the depot were they going to _make_? While this outing wasn’t strictly _against_ orders—Lora had said simply to “take care of himself” while she was gone at the lab, and Alan tended to be difficult to communicate with when he wasn’t awake enough to run in the morning—he knew he was going against the _intention_ of his Users. Would they revoke his permission to occupy the house alone, if they knew?

Or would it be the disobedience that finally condemned him to be recoded into something more like _Tron_? He was still no closer to finding the cause of their subtle disappointment in his performance. Acting more _Quorra_ -like and accompanying her was one of the few test options Rinzler had left in the queue. Despite the exasperation her actions caused, he had never detected _sorrow_ in his Users’ body language when they discussed her.

“’For sixty years I have been forgetful, every minute, but not for a second has this flowing toward me stopped or slowed’… It’s _different_ ,” Quorra murmured, looking at the pages suspiciously as Rinzler opened one eye and peered at her. “A memory glitch?”

“You or the Users?” he said with a snort. Quorra glared.

“Flynn coded some of the books from memory. How could he have possibly thrown errors on a text document? But _my_ memory is fine…”

“Users aren’t programs.”

Quorra frowned down at the book, and Rinzler was about to suggest she just add it to the stack and be done with it when there was a minor commotion near the door. He looked over—there was a clear line-of-sight between the front displays and the aisle they occupied—and yanked Quorra behind cover before cognition caught up to reflex.

“Wha—“

“ _Sam_Flynn_ is here,” Rinzler hissed, holding still in case the User had noticed the movement earlier. The User running the depot had greeted Sam on his arrival, so maybe not, but it was better to be cautious.

“ _Glitch_ ,” Quorra groaned, putting the poetry book in with the rest and then hugging the carrier to her chest. The depot, like most, was designed with a choke point to prevent unauthorized Users from making off with the contents, but that meant they had to try and get through the token-exchange _without_ gaining Sam’s notice. Otherwise their disobedience would certainly get to the other Users… and Rinzler found his sound intensifying at the thought.

“Do you guys have a cat back here?” Sam said, coming closer, and the two programs stared at each other before Rinzler sucked in a breath and held it, the only sure way to cancel the noise here. Quorra tugged his arm, leading him back toward a colorful collection of books that appeared to be for small Users if her identification was right.

Distracted by keeping his breath _in_ despite User-scripts wanting air exchange _now_ , Rinzler had to trust Quorra to steer them… and Quorra’s luck was apparently _off_ today. At a turn they almost plowed into Sam, only Quorra’s hand on his arm keeping Rinzler from stumbling into the User since lack of air was making him glitch again. He almost ran into Quorra instead, knocked off-balance, and Sam actually _squeaked_ before Quorra did the expedient thing and grabbed him too. Rinzler felt his own breathing re-start with an almost painful gasp, the fog clearing from his sensors after a moment spent with his head bowed.

“Quorra what the he—is that _Rinzler_?” Sam said, eyes going somehow even wider than the time Rinzler had cornered him at his meeting with Alan.

“You said I could explore with a partner,” Quorra said, and after a moment’s hesitation she handed the carrier full of books to Sam, who took it mechanically.

“He’s not supposed to be out here!”

“ _User_ ,” Rinzler interrupted, fixing Sam with a glare. The User’s jaw snapped shut immediately, little glances going sideways to Quorra as he tried to back away and was halted by her hand on his arm.

“Please, Sam, Alan and Lora can’t know. It’s my fault anyway. I talked him into it.”

“I thought he was, I _dunno_ , programmed to _kill you_ or something?”

“I’m right here,” Rinzler growled. He tolerated his Users occasionally speaking as if he wasn’t present, but glitch if he was going to allow Sam the same right.

“So. _You_. Killing people. Like _us_ ,” Sam said, shifting the books to gesture at the three of them. He was keeping his voice low, but it was hard to mistake the emphasis on the words.

“No longer valid,” Rinzler said with a huff. Quorra made a frustrated noise, the only warning before she looped her arms around both his neck and Sam’s, squeezing them both a little.

“How about lunch?” she said brightly, tugging them both into following her to the depot’s installed User.

“What the hell does that even mean?” Sam said, digging his heels in a little. It was almost comical, watching him try to stop their progress when a few moments’ observation showed that Quorra was clearly stronger than he was, even with the added resistance of the books he was still carrying.

“This isn’t the Grid,” Rinzler said, shrugging, content to let Quorra steer him without the hysterics. If it kept Sam off-balance, it meant that maybe this outing wouldn’t be reported after all. He could live with that.

“And since when do you _talk_?”

“ _Lunch_. I was thinking that café we saw a block down... the one we stopped to look up. What do you think? They have sandwiches that they put into some machine.. it looks complicated. The Yelp reviews were good,” Quorra said in complete override of Sam’s part of the conversation. Rinzler felt his lips twitching into an unwilling smile. Oh, she was a _worthy_ opponent.

“Do they have hot chocolate?” he asked, watching from the corners of his eyes as Sam flailed with one hand.

“The menu had a couple kinds. I’m not sure what makes chocolate _Mexican_.”

“Are we even having the same conversation anymore?” Sam said plaintively.

“And you’re just in time to give the money to the nice man!” Quorra grinned and gave Sam a shove toward the User at the desk, earning an over-the-shoulder glare as he adjusted his grip on the bag full of books.

“You know what? _Fine_. You win. And you two are explaining _what the hell_ over lunch.”

“We’re getting books,” Rinzler said as innocently as he could manage, unable to resist the temptation. Something read _right_ about it, an echo of laughter in a corrupted memory file. Like this had played before, a Flynn and a friend and three of them pressed together like comrades instead of bitter enemies. Quorra pressed her hands to her face to try and hold in giggling, the sound coming out at a strangled snort while Sam straightened his back and marched, grumbling, to the desk to finish the requisition.

“Oh, that was good,” she said after a few nanos spent composing herself, mischief still dancing in her eyes as she once more settled an arm around Rinzler’s shoulders. He didn’t shrug her off, eyes on Sam’s flustered interaction. “ _Told you_ that you would have fun.”

“For a definition,” he said with a nod.


	13. Coda: Link

It isn’t that she’s forward. She really isn’t—most of Arjia would have classified her as _shy_. It’s just that it’s been so long, nothing but the cloud of sadness over the hideout and then being _so very careful_ to avoid even the slightest brush where touch-scans could sense that when she finally, _finally_ meets someone new, someone not afraid of her, she can’t help it. She needs contact, links, something too much. Even losing the Sea is _nothing_ compared to the isolation, to Flynn withdrawing further and further into his own head. She needs a connection or she’s going to lose it, and Sam is _there_.

Sam never knows, of course. How could he—he’s a User, and she knows from bitter experience with Flynn that no matter how deeply they can dig into the system, how much alike they look and act, that Users are not programs. Maybe that’s better, though. Sam’s easy, like his father used to be, and even though the User world is so very dead in a lot of ways, it’s still comforting to share body heat, to feel the gentle rhythm of breaths pressed against her side or back. If she could figure out how to coax him up into the loft and out of the couch… well, that’s more daydream-fodder than anything else. She’s not _that_ forward, no matter how well-coded Sam looks, and before a step like that she should probably ‘fess up and explain things.

This way she can keep her secret.

Sam isn’t the only one, once she crosses through. Lora and Alan are free with hugs, with guiding hands on arms and shoulders. She has to turn away, though, when they turn to each other, the gentle touches and cuddles that say _bonded counterparts_ loud and clear just a little too much even for her. She knows she should be grateful for just her life and freedom, gifts given at the cost of too many lives, maybe even a world. It’s just daydream-fodder, wishing for love, too.

Roy seems to lean, like a magnet, on anyone nearby. It reminds her of Arjia, and if she doesn’t think about it too much it almost feels like home, the way his quiet joy suffuses a room. And then she meets Ed, who barges in on Sam’s living space without notice and takes any opportunity to swat, sit on, lean over, and generally be a nuisance that she just has to _ask_. It’s worth the embarrassment of the question to watch them both turn red and to get, haltingly, the story of their unlikely friendship.

Rinzler is harder to deal with. He’s Basic to the core, aloof and cautious and quiet even for one of them. Tron had been an enigma, one you could count on to be distantly polite but surrounded by a veil of sadness that seemed impossible to break. Rinzler’s worse. He _knows_ , and he could give away her little stolen indulgences with a few words, but he doesn’t.

She tries, she really does, but Rinzler is also too glitching well-coded for his own good—and the scar just makes it _worse_ , because she doesn’t think anyone else would have managed to even hold together after a wound like that, let alone be resilient enough to do what he did—and he keeps _edging nearer to her_ , in increments so small that if she didn’t have the habit of policing her space as tightly as she did, she never would have noticed. Not all at once, no, not like those cheesy User strategies in some of the films Sam’s shown her. Rinzler is more subtle than that—collapsing her bubble of space bit by bit across their encounters, and she supposes she can stop it anytime, but that means never visiting again. It’s not being forward if the other party is the one making moves on you, anyway.

It’s the coffee place that’s the last straw.

She’s been stuck in the press of too many Users, just for a couple of warm drinks, and more than a little frazzled by the time she hands Rinzler the cocoa. She’s not sure why salt is important, but all he ever does is shrug when she tries to question one of his frivolous choices. There’s not a lot of space on the bench, but she can still manage a small strip of distance— _relief_ , after a little too _much_ touch, too much jostling and no need for live contact to notice impatience practically fizzing in the air.

The Enforcer is purring, a real cat-like purr of contentment, and she can’t help but feel a bubble of laughter rising at the tableau she knows they must present. The last survivors, once sworn to each other’s destruction… there’s a certain amount of poetic irony in that. She takes a sip of her drink instead, chai latte that lets her sit and try to analyze the layers of flavor rather than have to think. It’s an analysis that occupies _enough_ of her thoughts that she almost doesn’t register the first, faint brush against her arm.

Rinzler is looking away, watching a User giving an overly-complicated order to the poor clerk, but his elbow definitely brushes against her arm again as he takes a sip of his drink. The purring’s dropped another octave, a deep sound she’s never heard him make before.

She’s not _forward_ , but there’s only so much dancing around things that she’s _ever_ been able to take.

She plants a foot, slides the handful of centimeters over until they come into contact, Rinzler’s body warmer than any User’s by several degrees. He starts—she’d giggle, but that would break the spell of the moment—and then relaxes again with a low sigh.

She smiles against the lip of the cup, letting a little of her weight rest against him. After a while, she can feel his arm wrap loosely around her waist.

They aren’t friends yet, not exactly. But it’s a connection.


	14. 1001

Rinzler followed warily, watching the tense lines of Alan-One’s back and the movement of other office-users out of the corners of his eyes. He shivered too, huddled into a hooded sweatshirt against the chilly rain that had settled over the city and pattered down for the last few days, still damp from the soaking they’d gotten between the car and the door to the glass tower that the User had guided him into. From under the concealing hood, he snatched glances at Users dressed much like his own, indicative of some important admin function if he understood some of the cryptic remarks that had passed over the phone and from conversations with Sam_Flynn. It all _felt_ familiar, the crackling tension in the air that had reliably preceded Clu’s storms of temper, and like then Rinzler kept his head bowed and his vocals silent except for the faint rising and falling _purr_ that had translated with him to this world.

Really, he had expected this sooner. Then _stopped_ , and maybe that was his mistake.

Alan-One led them into a small room, lights bright enough to make Rinzler wince involuntarily at how they overwhelmed his optics. The User smiled wanly, looking half-sick himself.

“If you want, you can stay. I’ll see if I can get you set up with something to do… maybe this world just doesn’t agree with you,” Alan-One said softly, hand on Rinzler’s shoulder. Not sure what else to do, he nodded, receiving a distracted pat in return.

There was a device set up, incongruously similar to the construction lasers used in-system, and Alan-One wordlessly positioned Rinzler at the target the device pointed to. He waited, huddled, wishing he could take the morning back. He _still_ wasn’t sure what had triggered all of this—he had risen and dressed as normal, taken in the measured energy for the morning. Stumbled a little on the rain-slick stairs, but that had been corrected soon _enough_. He hadn’t fallen, and could have easily run alongside his User like most mornings. Instead he’d been chased into the bathroom, examined closely, exclaimed over, and had to listen to snatches of an argument between his Users through closed doors before being herded _here_.

Something was deeply wrong with him, they’d said. His user-world body could be failing; he’d lost weight in the weeks—months—since his arrival. They needed to see his code.

“We’ll just take a look at your code, make sure you’re healthy. Maybe take the tour if there’s time. Well, all right, there’s plenty of time. No timer on this laser,” Alan said, rambling as he did when he was distracted or nervous. “And if you want to come _home_ , that’s fine too. You’ll get a front-row seat to Lora telling me this was a bad idea.” Another pause, as if the User was waiting for a response.

Rinzler bowed his head, itching, feeling breath speed up at the desperate desire to _move_ , run, get _away_. Look was a perilous short step from _edit_. He knew, _knew_ that they were dissatisfied with his progress even though Alan-One had put effort into hiding it. Perhaps they had lost patience with him, perhaps they’d been hoping he’d revert to _Tron_ on his own once his memory had broken open and things started coming out. Impossible to know what metric he’d failed, but he _did_ know well enough that he did not want to be recoded. Not again, even if his memory of the first time was a disjointed blur of screaming and pain and fragments of Clu crooning that soon enough he would be _perfect_ as he should have been.

He could leave. Overpower the User and run. He had brought the bus pass, a little spare currency from the last outing that Quorra had dragged him on. Rinzler sighed as Alan-One stepped into the target area beside him, still stonily silent. There was nowhere to run _to_ , and he did not have a function here.

If anyone had the _right_ to remake him, it was his User, wasn’t it?

Rinzler closed his eyes, the sound of his breathing loud in his ears, and then the world turned inside-out.

It was the data that got his attention first. A scan, a _real_ scan, that bounced out and back without conscious awareness. Programs around them, their relative distance, power sources, all of it slotting neatly into place in the corners of his consciousness that had slowly quieted, _missing_ the constant stream of information. He also didn’t feel the constant thump-thump of a heart in his core, and after another slow breath Rinzler opened his eyes.

It was like and unlike his dreams, but it was _definitely_ nothing like the Grid. Instead of the boxy, User-ish towers that he was used to, the skyline that stretched into the distance was a diversity of intricate, crystalline shapes that reminded him more of _ISO_ manufacture than anything Clu would have approved of. All around was light, permeating the space around them as the glassine material of the system glowed from within rather than the spare lines and points of the Grid. And _color_ —it was not the riot of greens and browns and grays that he was familiar with from the User environments, but hues of violet and teal and sea-blue that blended seamlessly into each other, shifting subtly with the ebb and flow of power through the environment, like a breeze. It was the color that tugged on fragmented memory more than anything else, shades that whispered _home_ and the earliest files from his compilation. Rinzler— _Tron_ had been here before.

Beside him, Alan-One _tsked_ faintly, touching Rinzler’s shoulder. The clear-bright sense of _power_ leached through the touch, overlain with worry and a thread of anger that made the Enforcer duck his head in reflex. At least his User was properly equipped. Some outfitter had given him a lightly armored suit, though the flexible armor plates seemed at first glance insubstantial, woven of light and power instead of the more tangible plates in his own, returned gridsuit.

“At least we don’t need to find you a suit,” Alan-One murmured, “but a disk.. hmm. Follow me.”

The streets were crowded with programs once they stepped down from the platform they’d rezzed to. Rinzler had to decline a blizzard of curious pings and status queries that followed them, answering all with a terse _/standby_. Several sent _shock_ -garbled requests, confusing his registry with _another_ JA-307020 in the system. To those he perhaps sent a little bit more venom in the blanket response.

It was soon clear what the User had planned—there was a graceful building that resembled the I/O towers of his memory, and inside was a workspace packed neatly with calls, half-completed templates and batons, and little broken pieces of things. A bit even nested in a corner of the workspace, perched on top of several datapads. Rinzler drifted to a stop in the center of the space, positioned neatly between the panels of a deep-scanner, while Alan-One started rifling through storage compartments. The bit, startled by the activity, bleated a sharp _[No]_ and fluttered away into a bin full of broken vehicle batons.

He could still leave. Scans had been useful in flagging the important zones in the system— _Portal Control_ was among them. Rinzler curled his fingers into fists, trying to resist the impulse to fidget. He had a relatively solid working knowledge of the public transit in the city, he could _disappear_ , perhaps arrange something with Quorra or Roy to spoof credentials for a user-function.

Alan-One came back, holding a disk. Not the ring-styled disk of the Grid, but a complete circle with intricate spirals worked into the milky material. Rinzler felt himself go stiff and tense when Alan-One circled behind him, touched the disk to his dock. It didn’t engage—he couldn’t connect to it. Rinzler reminded himself to breathe. Cooling properly meant the difference between lagging and not.

“Hang on.. figures I’m not going to be lucky…” Alan-One said. A burst of power behind him, nonsense-data trickling back, and he didn’t have time to brace before there was a _push_ to his dock and a _click_ both felt and heard.

The system blinked out.

When it blinked on again—a groggy query to the clock indicated he had been nonfunctional for 42.8 microcycles—there were voices. Alan-One’s and another’s. _Familiar_.

“Are you sure you don’t want a proper quarantine? There’s no telling what the previous viral exposure did to his code, and I’ve never seen that kind of response to synching an identity disk before..”

“I think we’re fine. I should have thought to bring out two to begin with, given Sam’s story,” Alan-One said.

“That’s another issue. Why two? There could be Trojan data just waiting in his algorithms and—“

“We’re _fine_ , Tron. Let me run the diagnostic.”

_Tron_.

Rinzler cut breathing to swallow the growl that wanted to rise in his chest, to cancel the tension that made him want to spring up and test the disks heavy in his dock. Tron the failure. Tron the ghost.

Tron, the one his Users had _wanted_.

“If you want to be helpful, find some energy packs. Rinzler’s power levels are way too low,” Alan-One said.

“I shouldn’t leave you alone with him. He’s dangerous,” Tron said, mulishly stubborn, and Rinzler would happily demonstrate just how dangerous he could be if it meant the imposter-double would _go away_.

“It’s fine. _Shoo_.”

Tron left with ill-grace, a bright spot in Rinzler’s scans. Cautiously, once Tron had dropped from the local process list, he opened his eyes to watch Alan-One. His User was frowning at a display, sorting through different scan results in rapid succession.

“What the hell happened to you?” Alan-One muttered, though he summoned a smile when he noticed Rinzler’s scrutiny. “Welcome back. Feeling better?”

Sitting up—it was pointless to attempt to pretend he was still offline—Rinzler tilted his head at the query, not sure how to respond. He didn’t feel better or worse, the disks reading back normal, memory and code backup at 100%. His power levels were a little low, but within his tolerances. Clu had refined him to run on much, much less and maintain combat efficiency.

“Mad at me?” Alan said with forced lightness. “I guess I should have warned you about Tron. This is Encom’s system. Tron is part of the security suite here, much like you were in the Grid if I understand right. From what any of us can tell, Kevin made a copy of Tron to install to the Grid without telling me or anyone else. That would be you. I’m going to check your code against an archival version of Tron’s, see what’s going on in there.” The User indicated a display showing code spinning lazily in raw format, and Rinzler had to avert his eyes at the sight. He had not been permitted to see his own code, and the display now made him faintly nauseous. “Maybe we can see what’s been giving you problems.”

He nodded meekly as Alan-One crossed behind him. Felt his disks open to his User’s touch, the sensation familiar—how many times had Clu done so to access his memories?—and alien simultaneously. Unusual that Alan-One had left them docked instead of demanding Rinzler hand them over, but perhaps something about viewing him in realtime was useful to whatever the User was looking for. Whatever that was. That was familiar too, though the reference was fragmented. Alan-One would have had to bugcheck him, though, when he was a beta.

_Was_ his code damaged somehow? Rinzler didn’t _feel_ damaged. A little worn, but that was simply the piling-up of not enough sleep and short rations, nothing serious. Not the icy crackle of damage, not the numb nothing of the Sea, not the stuttering inputs of glitches.

The familiar-unfamiliar feeling of Alan-One rifling through his code stayed constant, little noises of interest coming from over his shoulder. Rinzler tried to focus on keeping his breathing steady, to not lock the routine up in distraction. It was a little easier than it had been, the User world having drilled the reflex into him. Time stretched and oozed, the system clock’s ticks dragging by.

“What the hell—“ Alan-One said, Rinzler’s only warning before the flick of fingers through the trees of his code changed to a _tug_ against a cluster of lines. He moved without thinking, shoving _back_ and rolling _away_ and coming up in a crouch, access slamming closed as his fingers closed around the ring of his identity disk—black and orange, as it should be, but having kept the milky-glass quality of the original material instead of matching to his more solid armor, the neat circle of the inner circuit upon closer inspection really a more complex tangle of red-orange light. He checked the impulse to activate it, tried to find words around the angry rattle that filled the workspace to query, apologize, _something_ to his User’s shocked expression. If he didn’t think of something Alan-One could do a lot _worse_ than poke and tug—

“ _Stop_!”

_Tron_. The other program skidded in, a blur of blue light preceding him, and Rinzler’s disk was split and activated in the nanos between registering the attack and deflecting it. The blue—Tron’s disk—arced back, reversing in midair, and Rinzler surged to his feet and slid to the side, one disk deflecting it again and the other up to guard as Tron approached. He made a beeline for Alan-One, who was frozen in the process of picking himself up from where Rinzler had shoved him. Again the disk arced in, only this time Rinzler crossed his own pair and slammed _down_ , embedding the active edge in the floor. The blue winked out, leaving a plain circle, but Rinzler didn’t take the chance against Tron’s ability to control it from afar, circling away along the room’s perimeter.

“Should never have left you alone!” Tron was saying, speaking fast and worried and sending a loud clap of _/stop-desist_ Rinzler’s way. They were between Rinzler and the exit. He felt his face twist into a snarl, rumbling rattling louder than his own voice. Glitched for _gridbugs_ , but he couldn’t stay. Couldn’t stay now, not with Tron undoubtedly classing him a threat and poised to send half the system’s security after him. He’d threatened Alan-One, doomed himself to recode, and crash it he _wanted to live_.

“Get out of my way!”

Tron rose, snarling, blue light betraying the return of his disk, and Rinzler put on a burst of speed, his own disk flashing out as he tried to dart past. The anticipated strike met, force enough to jar Rinzler’s arm, but he managed to squeak by.

“ _Wait_!” Alan-One yelled, but Tron was following on Rinzler’s heels and glitch if he was going to walk into his own deresolution. They tore into the street, Rinzler ducking and dodging through a wave of confusion and anger as they hit the programs there, Tron on his heels but slightly slower—the other program must have traded strength and heavier armor for Rinzler’s speed and agility. He ran to a wall, skidding a little on the smooth surface, and hopped up and over, changing direction on a sharp angle. Blue flashed in his peripheral vision, and the Enforcer leaped and twisted, batting away the disk once, twice as Tron sent it at him on return.

They ran on, the disk throws stuttering to a halt as Rinzler managed to pull ahead, perhaps out of the range of Tron’s ability to control its flight. _Portal Control_ , he had to get to Portal Control and _out_ before he was hemmed in. The direction mapped, a difficult run on foot but he didn’t have a baton to spare, hadn’t thought to grab one on his way out of the workroom.

_Threat_ danced along his senses, reflexes honed from a kilocycle spent hunting rebels, and Rinzler dove for the ground as a blast hit a wall nearby. Tank fire. A quick brush along the feeds—he had listen-only access to the security channel, perhaps a feature of this system reading his function. Tron had called reinforcements, and the monitor in question used Rinzler’s duck and roll to close, an active sword in his hand. So he was going to try and use his greater mass to the advantage… but Rinzler had practiced enough against _Clu_ to be wary of such a trick. Tron had better reach, but not speed, and Rinzler danced in, blades lashing against the other program’s sword arm. They skittered against armor before catching on the plate-edge near Tron’s elbow, and there was a telling _crack_ even as Tron used his free hand to punch Rinzler in the dock. _Hard_.

Senses fizzed and _cut_ , only instinct and memory keeping him moving, oriented to where he knew the ground to be even if his senses insisted it was at a ninety-degree angle. A few sliding, scrabbling steps, another concussion that he barely avoided, sharp shrapnel pricking at his side and shoulder. Kept running, breath and rumble both harsh against his ears, letting his course be set by scan rather than waiting for sight to return. He _wanted_ his helmet, but the function was disabled thanks to catastrophic damage to the template.

Scan and vision both caught them, sentries by whatever name they used in this system. They were in his path to the transit line running nearest Portal Control—if he could find a transport running, he could be out easily. Snarling, Rinzler fed power to his disks until he felt them blaze, burning energy to pierce the heavier armor this place seemed to favor. The sentry directly in front of him shattered before he could utter a word, the Enforcer leaping and punching charged disks down. The two to each side were slow to react, perhaps not expecting a brazen attack on their line, and paid for their foolishness as Rinzler threw one point-blank into the sentry’s face, clashing with the other take the chance to snatch the baton he spotted at the program’s hip. Fingers dug into the wound in his shoulder, but Rinzler hissing neatly removed the offending hand before he kicked the sentry in the face and finished him with a strike to the core. Reached down to snatch his other disk before he dashed through the platform. The baton had a vehicle loaded on it, and from the commotion behind, there were reinforcements closing. The timing would have to be _exact_ , but…

The rail line was empty of trains, and Rinzler hurriedly locked and docked his disks, scanning the baton as he leaped the traffic counter at the platform. It was like the mark four batons in the Grid, which would make the tricky timing trickier.

_/stop-desist_ thundered along broadcast, edged with fear and fury. Rinzler smirked, knocking through a handful of frightened data-pushers, and threw the baton before him. A lightcycle rezzed neatly around him just as the light of a train made its first appearance, _just_ slotting him between two transports, and as soon as the controls were in place he pushed the ‘cycle for all the speed it could muster. He could get to Portal Control in a handful of micros, the lightcycle easily as fast as the custom mark two that Sam_Flynn had stolen from the User…

Humming filled the air around the rail line. Rinzler glanced to the side and hissed again. He didn’t recognize the vehicles that were swooping toward him, but he didn’t like the glowing, whirling rings that surrounded what looked more like a conventional lightjet one bit. He needed more power, something to push the ‘cycle out of their range…

The system _hummed_ , something _deep_ rising to meet his desperation, and energy surged hot along his circuits, down through the lightcycle. The track _glowed_ with it, but rather than wonder what happened Rinzler was forced to drag his attention to the here-and-now and swerve to keep the ‘cycle on the track and not overshoot a curve. Panting, he kept visuals locked forward even as scans traced the way the flying vehicles fell behind.

Portal Control loomed large soon enough, Rinzler pulling the lightcycle into a hopping jump with a last pull on the power source that crackled through him. He crashed to the platform, vehicle going back into standby as he tried to roll and disperse the extra energy. Dizzy, Rinzler pushed himself up again, stumbling past the programs that reached toward him, pinging worry for _Tron_ after his ID. He limped on, taking the relative breather to pick the bits of wall that had embedded themselves in his armor back out again. The security feed was still buzzing, and there was a wing of the flying things after him, Tron leading despite an indignant recompiler yelling along the channel. He had maybe a couple of microcycles of peace before they were on him…

Fingers moved rapidly over the baton’s controls, setting it to overload on his signal as he slipped inside the structure, tossing it after to seal off the main entrance and buy just a little more time. All he had to do was follow the power, the Portal out at the nexus of the energy he sensed through the building. Then he just had to activate the sequence, using his disk as a key. It was his only option, because the only thing back was derezz or recoding, and either way it would mean _his_ end.

“Tron! What’s going on? I got the alert message—“

Rinzler checked his run just in time, a blurry vision in white stepping into his path, and with a choked noise he forgot to breathe. It was _her_ , the program with Lora’s features, familiar and beloved. _Yori_.

“You’re not Tron,” she said, eyes widening as she reached for the baton clipped at her own hip.

“ _Wait_ ,” Rinzler said, reaching for her. Security was closing fast. His fingers closed on her wrist as hers found the control of the baton, which she promptly jammed against his core. He almost wheezed on a laugh.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t press this,” Yori growled, eyes narrowed, and Rinzler felt his core lurch painfully. She was dangerous and beautiful and _oh_ how had he ever forgotten _her_?

“I’m leaving,” he managed after a moment.

“Leaving?”

“I _know_ I don’t belong here,” he said. Yori seemed to mull it over, and it took an act of will not to pull away even with the hum of the fliers starting to fill the air beyond the windows. She grabbed his chin, locking her eyes with his, and he stared, startled, into her clear blue eyes, fragments of memory aligning and joining of a thousand other times she had done the same.

“Go. Seven hundred px down the corridor, turn right. I can’t guarantee they won’t follow.”

“I—thank you,” Rinzler said hoarsely, temptation to ask her to follow rising and dying before it could be voiced. Alan-One had said it earlier. He was a copy. _Unauthorized_. And she had her counterpart _here_. She flashed a smile at him.

“You’d better run.”

Rinzler ran. Seven hundred px felt like twice that, the injury to his side pulling and aching by the time he found the column of light that cut through Portal Control. Voices were behind him, Tron’s stridently giving orders to cut off all avenues of escape, to bring him in to Alan-One or derezz him. He stepped into the beam, unlatching his disk and hoping, _hoping_ that this would work.

“Rinzler!” Tron roared, and Rinzler saw Tron’s form, blurred by the currents of energy around him, burst into the room.

“Please,” Rinzler whispered, raising his disk, feeling _something_ tug at it, an otherworldly current draw it up, and _up_ \--

And he was back in the too-bright room, damp clothes and shivering and all. Something wet and shockingly warm against his clammy skin trickled from the bright point of pain on his shoulder—something must have compromised his shell when he was in the system, a lucky piece of shrapnel. He dug into his pockets, relieved to feel the plastic edge of the bus pass, the worn softness of the currency.

In front of him, the laser started to glow, a whine signaling it was cycling up. Sucking in a breath, Rinzler started out, forcing energy into limbs that felt leaden. He could retrace the route in easily enough—though he almost plowed into an admin-User, only reflexes enough to spin them around to avoid either of them kissing the ground. Commotion followed, Tron and Alan-One both easy to pick up out of the tangle of raised voices.

He skidded down the stairs, sliding along the railings as blandly uniformed Users alternately tried to give chase and find out from his pursuers what was going on. Rinzler jumped the last two levels, making a jarring landing and rolling forward even though it meant putting weight on the injured shoulder. Out the door, into the rain.

A bus was pulling up nearby. A few hundred px—yards. He dragged himself up the high steps, swiped the pass, and collapsed into a seat. Turned to look and see the force tumbling out the door, picking out the sharp edges of Tron’s armor and the faded blue-gray of Alan-One’s suit.

The bus turned the corner. Rinzler leaned against the window and closed his eyes, drained and shaking.

He was still himself. It was a start.


	15. Coda: Handbasket

Snooping wasn’t terrible as besetting sins went. Snooping while on the clock might technically be worse, but it was hard to feel bad about that either given that Ed was technically salaried. Technically, given that Lab Five was keeping Dr. Bradley from returning his messages about a possible intrusion in the system, this might even count as working. Technically.

What the hell Alan Bradley had to do with Sam Flynn’s very clandestine hardware project—Ed had been promised the very long story once they both had the free time to get very, very drunk, and Ed respected the rules of their beer summits enough not to question it—was an open question. Open enough that when Bradley checked in but didn’t _log_ in, Ed found an excuse to go lurk in the hall, his report printed out for hand delivery. Hell, even if Bradley was just doing some snooping of his own, maybe this time the man would actually _read_ the damn thing. If he was lucky, maybe he could buy a few minutes to look around. It wasn’t often Sam invoked the old rule from their dorm days.

The area was preternaturally silent for even a secondary lab, and Ed was beginning to wonder if he had misjudged Bradley’s destination when all the lights dimmed at once, followed shortly by the door to the clean room slamming open. A figure—tall, lanky, and with red-brown eyes that almost seemed to _glow_ from the confused glance Ed got of him—charged out, nearly running him down. _Nearly_ —Ed found his arm in a vice-like grip before he could kiss the floor, the pair of them spinning wildly like dervishes, and the apparition took off for the stairs at a dead sprint the moment they were free of each other. A _familiar_ apparition.

“The _fuck_ —“

The lights flickered again in the middle of the thought, longer, and Ed yelped when another tall ghost—one that looked disconcertingly more like the action figure in his office, only all sharp angles and softly _chiming_ , raced by, yelling some invective that was lost in the confusion. He wasn’t stopping either, and Ed had to throw himself out of the way to avoid being barreled down for real, felt something _sharp_ slice across the palm held up to keep the stranger from bouncing off him. He barely had time to register the more mundane form of Bradley stumbling out next, puffing a little but only a handful of steps behind his younger clone. Ed slid to the floor, feeling very much like a bird that managed to hit a window.

“Are you all right?”

He looked up from his stunned contemplation of the floor and the possible metaphysical implications of almost getting run over by three of Bradley. Felt his eyes go wide, the sarcastic remark he was _going_ to make dying on his lips.

“User ED-209? Are you hurt?” _His_ voice was speaking, laced with concern, coming from a perfect copy of _his_ face, whose ice-blue eyes held the same foxfire shine as the first Bradley. His clone was wearing the same armor that Bradley #2 had been dressed in, all sharp angles and plates that moved and adjusted with each of his double’s breaths. Plates that looked sort of like an angry parrot’s, all puffed out and clicking against each other.

“Just peachy,” he said—actually himself, just maybe suffering a _little_ detachment because _what the fuck_ , and that was apparently the right answer because his clone gave him a relieved grin, the armor settling into a saner configuration with the hiss of glass on glass. The grin faded into something more concerned, eventually settling as a little frown.

“Um, I’m sorry I lost Tron. I know your orders were to shadow him and learn from him, but you looked like you were hurt and—oh _no_. You’re.. what is that red stuff? Do you need a recompiler? Please don’t die!” the clone said, full of earnestness that made Ed almost embarrassed for him until panic replaced the seriousness at the sight of the sluggishly bleeding wound on Ed’s palm. Whatever that armor was, it had cut like a razor.

“No! No, I’m fine. _Really_. Almost as good as new,” Ed said, lunging to grab his double—and it wasn’t fair having to deal with that much _puppy_ aimed at him—before the.. whatever-the-hell he was ran off to summon help. His clone’s armor was weirdly warm to the touch, like something alive despite its sharpness. The clone stilled immediately, something like awe breaking through the concern. On Ed’s belt, his walkie-talkie crackled to life, building security chattering about the mobile disaster making its way down to the lobby. The Bradley triplets. _Right_. Finding out whatever the hell was going on wasn’t going to happen on its own.

“This is Dillinger,” he said into the device with a calm that was impressive given the galloping of his heart. He tried to lever to his feet before his clone used his captured arm to bodily lift Ed instead. Swallowing, because how fucking strong did that _make_ this guy?, he motioned for his double to follow him to the stairwell. Might as well see what the damage was. “Stand down security and cancel that 911 call.”

“With all due respect sir, what the hell?” Ernie said. But then Ernie had been slightly on the paranoid side since Sam decided to swan dive off the roof. Ed couldn’t exactly blame him for that one. BASE jumping was for people who were tired of life.

“Promotional shoot that went a little south. Bad wiring, artistic tantrum, you know the deal. It’s hard to find anybody who looks like Bradley anymore, though, and calling the cops is going to fuck up the promotion for the new Tron games.” Well, if there weren’t already Tron games in the offing, there would have to be now. Served Sam right for pushing to have the games department revitalized while also hiding.. whatever the hell he was hiding.

The stair was chilly, damp breeze still working its way through. No sign of Bradleys, though there were a couple of guards hanging out in doorways. Ed motioned them back inside, taking the steps as quickly as he could manage given that he was slightly shaky. His double followed close behind, almost growling once or twice when a slower guard made to block their progress. Ed tried not to think about that too hard.

“Right right. And I don’t want legal on my ass about NDAs again. Got it. Have fun.”

“Oh, all the time,” Ed said, breathing out when the talkie beeped and Ernie started passing the message along to those who weren’t listening in on that particular channel. Tried to clip it to his belt again with numb fingers, but he missed. Before it could fall, his double’s arm snaked out and snatched it from midair, his clone silently offering it.

“Thanks.”

“Anytime, User,” the clone said, that uncomfortable awe back in his voice.

“Ed. My name is Ed. You’d better use it if you don’t want a lot of weird questions.” _Christ_ , how the hell had the Bradley train cleared the stairs so fucking fast?

“Acknowledged Us—Ed.” The clone hesitated, waiting, and after a moment Ed stopped his descent to peer back at his armored double. Oh, right. Names.

“And you are?”

“Oh! Lesk. I’m Lesk. I’m sorry you probably have a lot of other programs—“

“Lesk. _Hi_. Nice to see you, uh, on this side of the screen,” Ed said, talking over the river of nervous babbling before it could get properly started. God, it was like watching old home movies of himself when he was sixteen. Old home movies of himself, only Lesk looked the same age _he_ did, and was a fucking _security program_ and— _no_. Those were bad thoughts. One disaster at a time. He was _not_ drunk enough to be considering what having secret childhood daydreams come to life was going to mean in terms of the real world. “Let’s go. We’d better stop the, uh, others from getting in trouble.”

“Right!”

The lobby was more sane than Ed would have imagined. Bradley—his actual Bradley—was leaning heavily on a chair, puffing and soaked to the skin, but otherwise normal and human. His clone—Bradley #2?—was crouched, fingers splayed on the ground and glaring at it fiercely, armor still featuring that crazy bird-puffness to it that Lesk had been showing earlier.

“Alan-One, I need an access key. This system isn’t giving me back any data! We’re going to lose Rinzler,” Bradley #2 said.

“Data… oh God,” Bradley said, scrubbing his hands across his face.

“User, please. _Access_.”

“There’s no access to give. This isn’t.. this isn’t a system. He could be anywhere by now…”

“No…” Bradley #2 paused, looking as ill as Bradley did for a moment.

“Ed will help,” Lesk said, approaching Bradley #2, “He already sent a desist to security. We can find him.”

“Ed?” Bradley said, peering myopically, still looking half-lost and a lot more than half-guilty. Bradley #3, the one who _hadn’t_ run him over, was nowhere to be seen.

“You are going to have a lot of explaining to do, and you’re buying the beer,” Ed finally said, punching the access key into his cellphone without looking at it. “In the meantime, who do I need to call to help find your program?”

And fuck if that wasn’t easy to say and hard to wrap his head around, but it was about the only conclusion he could draw. _Lesk_ was proof enough of that. Which meant that Bradley #2, if the pattern held up, was…

“Cockroach, get the hell off the floor. We’re going to my office, and then we’re going to have a chat.”

“We’re going to lose the trace. I can still find Rinzler if I can requisition a vehicle—“ Tron said, getting to his feet and glowering. The effect was a little lost. Without adrenaline making him shaky, the fluffy-bird armor looked more silly than dangerous.

“Rinzler probably took the 38. Traffic’s not too bad; he could be anywhere in the city by now. You tearing off isn’t going to do anything but get the cops’ attention, and you _really_ don’t want that. Besides. You’re bleeding.”

 Tron was, too, a rivulet of red trickling between the plates on his forearm to drip slowly on the floor. Bradley swore, took the injured limb in his hands as Tron tried to shoo him back.

“It’s not fatal,” Lesk volunteered. Ed locked eyes with Bradley as he jerked his thumb toward the elevator this time. Sam’s number was easy enough to find blind.

“Upstairs. Ed’s right,” Bradley said, reluctantly. “We can talk after I make some calls and have a look at your arm.”

“I’m fine. It’s superficial damage only.”

“Bleeding’s a little more serious than a surface crack,” Bradley said, giving Tron a little push, “March.” The frowning program only dug in his heels for a moment before sighing and snagging Lesk by the scruff to drag him along.

“Fair enough,” Ed said, letting the programs and the dripping Bradley take the lead into the little moving box. Sam’s phone picked up on the third ring, the bright feminine voice on the other end of the line explaining why the call hadn’t been dumped into voicemail like usual.

“Hi Dillinjunior,” Quorra chirped, her nickname for him making his lips curl involuntarily.

“Hi Q,” he said, “Sam around?”

“Taking down the last of the Halloween stuff. What’s up?”

“Have him call me back. There’s a bit of an emergency at Encom.”

“What happened? Is everyone OK?”

“Rinzler took off on the 38.” The words probably meant something to Quorra, and his guess proved right.

“ _Glitch_. We’ll be there soon,” she said, hanging up before Ed could get another word in edgewise. She was a smart girl—program?—and she’d undoubtedly bully Sam into talking if Bradley wouldn’t.

“Right,” Ed said to the dead line, pocketing the phone.

He couldn’t even be mad, he decided as the elevator began to ascend, watching Lesk lean against the glass wall and stare out at the rainy street while Tron and Bradley started a quiet argument over how hurt the former really was. He’d _wanted_ to know.


	16. 1010

The cessation of the rain shook Rinzler out of the light doze he’d fallen into. Rubbing at eyes gone tacky with grit, he peered out of the windows in the elevated shelter he’d found. Daylight, or at least the beginnings of it, was creeping through the sky, staining the clouds with red where sun peeked through. There was water nearby as well, the sound of waves masked by the rain and his own exhaustion when he’s picked the area. He wasn’t sure where he was, a natural result of picking stops and routes at random to confuse a follower. Sticking to the transit system seemed safest—his Users had shown a marked preference for secrecy and quiet in his outings with them, so likely they wouldn’t send anyone on the transports after him for fear of causing a _scene_.

Stretching cautiously—the long run and being crammed into small spaces for the rest of the day left him stiff, as did curling up in the tiny shelter sometime in the night—Rinzler eyed the long slide leading from the shelter and sighed. No helping it—it was the fastest way down without any acrobatics, and he knew from unfortunate experience that in _this_ world he couldn’t expect full efficiency first thing upon waking. The metal was cold to the touch and wet, adding a fresh chill to unevenly dried clothing, but his feet crunched down on gravel without incident. It was simple from there to hop the gates barring Users from access outside the appointed time and cross into the parking lot.

Rather than head immediately to the nearest station, Rinzler shoved his hands into his pockets and approached the shore. There was a paved path running parallel to the water, and after a moment watching it lap at the rocks he picked a direction and started walking. It was better than doing nothing, the future condensed to moment-to-moment decision gates.

Perhaps he should have planned for this instead of getting complacent. User bodies required a great deal more maintenance than his in-system shell, though the advantage of never having to worry about anyone _accessing_ him made up for the inconvenience. He had practice with acquiring food and other more obscure User resources—a brief stop to examine his shoulder and clean as much of the blood as he could proved that he could navigate _that_ on his own—but the _money-tokens_ were going to be a problem. He needed a function here to acquire them, and he had no idea how to find one. This wasn’t like the Grid, with a central administrator to simply _assign_ something to an unused program.

Quorra might know. Quorra came with the complication of Sam_Flynn. Sam_Flynn was an associate of Alan-One’s.

Perhaps he should do his own reconnaissance for the moment.

Meditatively, Rinzler walked the very edge of the path, ignoring the damp of the occasional spray from the water. The first order of business was to orient and take stock of what he _did_ have. He couldn’t continue random travel forever. It would make his behavior stand out too much from that of the other residents. He was also going to need better shelter, since the last thing he wanted was to run afoul of User-security for disobeying restricted area warnings. It had been worth the risk earlier, but it was foolish to make into a regular event. Maybe Roy could help… but he had met Roy through Alan-One. Again the circle of Users he _knew_ came back to his own User.

He was not going to hand himself back that easily. Not with recoding a _certainty_ for his disobedience this time.

“I do hope, young man, that you don’t plan on _jumping_ into that water. I would be obligated to try and get you out, and that would be a shame for everyone involved.” A voice, the timbre oddly familiar, broke Rinzler from his thoughts. He peered up owlishly at the figure of a User seated in a chair mounted on wheels, an arrangement that he’d glimpsed a few times before. The features tugged at memory tags too, but he looked hollowed-out somehow. Fragile. A designation didn’t come to mind, more frustrating memory fragments.

“No,” Rinzler said after a few moments, when it became clear the strange-familiar User was actually expecting a response. To demonstrate, he stepped back from the edge, moving closer to the chair.

“Good. I can only imagine the calls my children are already getting, no need to add a hospital call to the mix,” the User, with an air of mischief, said conspiratorially. Rinzler eyed the chair and the water again and nodded. The User was eyeing him in return, blue eyes narrowed in speculation. Apparently he came to a satisfying conclusion, because he nodded and beckoned Rinzler a little closer.

“So, maritime emergencies out of the way… what brings a young man like you out to a lonely park like this at _this_ hour of the morning? Certainly it can’t be the view, even if there happens to be one this morning.”

Rinzler frowned. Part of him wanted to trust the User, the part that recognized the tilt of a head, the amused quirk of lips. Part of him preferred the idea of breaking away entirely, before he got tangled up and _caught_ by the people he was trying to _avoid_. It seemed suspiciously coincidental that a sort-of familiar face would happen upon him _now_ … but then again, he’d actually had some luck with Yori. Dare he trust luck again?

“Not the talkative type? I suppose I can’t blame you,” the User said, breaking into Rinzler’s contemplation, “I shouldn’t be nattering on either. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m a fugitive.” And the mischievous look was back, capped with an eyebrow waggle that made Rinzler’s carefully neutral expression twitch amusement for a moment.

“Dangerous?” he said offhandedly, relieved when the vocal glitch didn’t manifest _too_ clearly.

“Depends on if you’re under attack from my fists or my wits,” the User said, “One is in much better form than the other. But where are my manners? Dr. Walter Gibbs, at your service. And you are?”

“Rinzler,” he said, nodding respectfully. The designation was also familiar—the full version of WGibbs, perhaps? He wished he knew _how_ he knew.

“Rinzler. _Interesting_.” Curiosity joined speculation in Gibbs’ expression, and Rinzler took a step back along the path. The old User’s interest turned rueful.

“All right, all right. Loose lips and all. Fair enough, and I doubt I have anything of value to trade for the story anyway. I imagine it must be fascinating.”

“Maybe,” Rinzler said, snorting a little. Was it? He didn’t have a sample size of Users to be able to know.

“Almost certainly, since last I checked time travel is still impossible. You look very much like an old colleague of mine.. present emphasis on the _old_ ,” Gibbs said, “It’s unfortunate that he, along with most of the world, decided my brains are in my hip. _Hmph_. Terribly rude, being thought a _mental_ invalid. That’s why I’m on the lam, you see. Some days a man just needs to get out on his own for a while.”

“Yes,” Rinzler said, frowning as he tried to make sense of Gibbs’ words. The User had been injured, and then kept confined? But wasn’t the purpose of peripherals like the chair to _compensate_ for irreparable damage? What was the point of extra confinement?

Assuming the User—he _wished_ he could remember _whose_ aside from old overlays of trust—was telling the truth, they had a common cause to be _avoiding_ Alan-One and the rest. He also, realistically, needed _some_ kind of User ally if he was going to acquire the resources he needed to stay in optimal condition. _Well_. If things went poorly, it was highly unlikely that Gibbs would be able to catch him when Tron and Alan-One both hadn’t managed it under more favorable conditions. Something in his expression must have given the line of processing away, because Gibbs was watching him thoughtfully.

“If I remember right… being _that_ young means being perpetually starving. Could I perhaps interest you in a trade? The story for breakfast, maybe? I happen to know of a place that has divine waffles, and it should be open by now.”

Rinzler’s eyes narrowed—as far as outright bribery attempts went, it was laughably transparent. Unfortunately, _biology_ chose to intervene, his abdomen rumbling uncomfortably. He hadn’t eaten anything since the previous morning, preferring to save the money-tokens until he _needed_ them, and given the wave of dizziness and phantom hollow feeling that his body decided to report at the _mention_ of food, that was perhaps not so wise.

“It’s a long story,” he said finally.

“I have nothing but time,” Gibbs said, motioning for Rinzler to walk with him. They ambled slowly, in deference to the motor that drove the wheeled chair along. “If it’s _that_ long, I’ll be sure to throw in lunch, too.”

“The long version might be.”

“And how long is the long version?”

“A kilocycle,” Rinzler said, shrugging. Gibbs looked at him thoughtfully.

“And a cycle is what? A minute? A year?” There was that gleam of interest, despite the simplicity of the question. Rinzler hummed thoughtfully. He’d learned the way Users measured time, but it was hard to equate that very well with the way he knew time passed in-system.

“A millicycle is one-third of a day,” Rinzler said finally, “Give or take. _Subjectively_.”

Gibbs’ brow furrowed as he mouthed something to himself, eyebrows going up once he reached the conclusion of whatever calculation he’d made. After a long look at Rinzler, he began to laugh, and after the chair’s path wobbled alarmingly with the User’s humor, Rinzler snagged one of the handles to keep it from going off the pavement and into the water.

“Well, _young man_ , I’d definitely like to hear the long version,” Gibbs said, some private mirth still lingering in his expression. “Right through to dessert, if that’s what it takes.”

Rinzler hummed again, weighing his options, and decided to _tell him_.

It only took until dessert because of the interruptions due to rain—and then Gibbs had insisted on purchasing a raincoat for him, an indulgence that proved to be practical when the rain simply got _worse_ as the day wore on—and a brief demonstration of just how _much_ he could lift when the User had been skeptical of his physical abilities that had spiraled into quite a few more tests of his speed, endurance, and agility. The last might have been insulting if it weren’t for the utter _fascination_ the User had with his capabilities, frantically scribbling notes and making calculations with his phone and looking every inch the way a program executing a particularly involved task did. From the comments Gibbs let slip, it had been a while since the User was able to execute his function. Given his generosity, Rinzler didn’t mind giving him the opportunity.

They had also migrated around the city, though it was thanks to a _mutual_ desire to avoid pursuit. Oddly, he and Gibbs ended up at the café that Quorra had dragged him and Sam to earlier. Perhaps not oddly, though, considering that Rinzler was on his fifth mug of very good cocoa by the time the story ran out of words. Gibbs frowned thoughtfully into the silence, breaking a stray cookie into tiny pieces as whatever calculations he was making now went through his head.

“I don’t think it’s going to be easy for you to get along here on your own,” Gibbs finally said, slowly. “Most jobs—functions, as you put it—require advanced training that you haven’t had the advantage of receiving. Maybe a military or law enforcement position would suit your skills, but we’d need to somehow translate your experience into credentials that make sense and then forge the documents proving it. You’d be stuck with some of the more menial jobs otherwise, and those frankly pay a pittance that would leave you unable to cover _all_ your expenses on your own. On top of that, even getting _that_ sort of job requires paperwork to prove your identity, which you don’t _have_ for obvious reasons. I’m sure that could be taken care of, but your best bet for forging the identity documents would probably be Roy Kleinberg, and I haven’t spoken to _him_ in over a decade.”

“I know him. He’s Alan-One’s friend,” Rinzler said, sighing.

“Good. I was worried about him when he dropped off the map after that rather crazy hacking investigation. Well.. that doesn’t solve your problem if you want to avoid Alan. _Hmmm_.”

Rinzler sighed again, swirling the remains of the drink and weighing the options. Maybe he could stretch his resources until he could discover an alternate route to getting the files he needed? If that was impossible, though… resource deprivation killed User-bodies as easily as it did program shells. Trading one sort of death for another wasn’t what he had in mind by a long shot. He grimaced.

“All things considered, I think you’d better join up with this Quorra of yours,” Gibbs said after another long moment. “You can work things out together, share resources. If finding _this_ place is indicative of your work together, it’ll be better for both of you than going it alone.”

“Quorra is staying with Sam_Flynn. It isn’t any better than Roy.”

“Not necessarily,” Gibbs said, a muted satisfaction back in his expression. “Not if you tell Sam what you told me about what happened. Sam and Alan might be close, but that’s never stopped him from going his own way. If Alan’s wishes were really that important to young Mr. Flynn, he would have taken over Encom _years_ ago. Unless I have _seriously_ misread him, he won’t like the possibility that Alan wanted to rewrite you any more than _I_ do. Even if I don’t think Alan _meant_ to try.”

“He said he just wanted to _look_ ,” Rinzler grumbled, hunching. It was his User’s _right_ , and Lora had been overridden, and he scowled at the shuddery memory. No. He didn’t feel sorry _at all_ for disobeying. Gibbs reached out and patted his arm.

“Even if touching _was_ just a natural reaction to seeing something incredible, it was cruel of him not to explain to you what he was doing in the first place. Note I am _not_ telling you to go back to the Bradley house. If you don’t feel safe there, you don’t need to go there. End of story. I would _prefer_ you go somewhere you have allies. For _your_ sake. Quorra and Sam are a good idea.”

“Sam is also terrified of me,” Rinzler pointed out.

“Another point in his favor, then.”

Rinzler canted his head to the side, confused. “Isn’t that a bad thing?”

“Given what I saw today? You’re currently injured and far too skinny and you’re still legitimately terrifying if you want to be. I, for one, would _not_ want to be on the receiving end of your function. At least Sam has the sense to notice that.”

Rinzler coughed faintly to cover the snicker that rose at that statement. Gibbs favored him with a raised eyebrow.

“He may have gotten on the receiving end,” he said innocently. Gibbs laughed and swatted his arm before rooting around in one of the chair’s many storage compartments. With a noise of satisfaction, he handed a slip of paper to Rinzler.

“Call me when you get settled in. Wait. Here. I’ll add the desk where I’m staying too, just in case the phone dies on me,” he said, snatching the paper back to scribble on it with a pen that appeared from a pocket. The slip was a faded Encom card, bearing Gibbs’ name and various other pieces of contact information. The office number had been crossed out and another written in its place. After a moments’ study, Rinzler stuck it in his pocket.

“Didn’t say I’d go.”

“Do you have a better plan?”

Rinzler huffed. Gibbs looked self-satisfied.

“If it’s that much of a problem, you could also always point out to them that they _do_ owe you their lives. Neither of them would have survived falling into your Sea. That’s certainly worth at least temporary room and board.”

Rinzler opened his mouth to counter and then shut it again, considering. It wasn’t _inaccurate_. Strange to think that he could perhaps call in that debt—it was just his function, even if the impulse to stop Clu had been confused and confusing. On the other hand, strange as it was, it was no worse than going back to his Users, especially since by Gibbs’ implication it was a case of _Rinzler_ owing _them_ if he went back.

“I’ll call,” he said. “Will _you_ make it home all right?”

“I’ll take a cab to my grand-daughter’s and confound my keepers a little longer. I saw a very agreeable looking taxi stand on our way here,” Gibbs said with a nod. “But you’d best be going. It’s getting late, and old men like me need our beauty rest. You don’t want to see how ugly I’ll get if I’m up too long waiting for your call.”

Rolling his eyes—he already knew _that_ was a lie—Rinzler got to his feet and let himself get pulled into a brief hug.

“Take care, young man.”

“I will.” The words felt familiar, as if this sort of parting had played out many times in his lost memories. Rinzler huddled into the coat once he was back out in the rain, grateful that the wet was no longer soaking into his clothes. It didn’t take long for a bus to appear, one full of tired Users from the look of it. Rinzler let it take him away from the café, watching the watery lights of the city pass by.


	17. 1011

Luck was not with him after all.

Rinzler huffed softly, huddled in his coat, and had to stifle a yawn. The sun had set a while ago, only the shivering reflections of lights on water left to pick out as landmarks. He was confident of the location—Quorra had given him the address while she had been trying to convince him to visit. The problem was that neither Quorra nor Sam appeared to be _home_ , and investigating the improvised-looking structure simply triggered what sounded like one of the pet-type creatures that Users sometimes kept, one of the kind that often acted as living alarm systems.

Rinzler didn’t feel like getting into a fight with yet another branch of security, and settled in to wait. And _wait_. And wait some more. Surely they couldn’t have elected to move away, even though Alan-One had suggested it in Rinzler’s hearing easily a dozen times. He also did not feel at all like spending another night outside—the pervasive wet chill felt like it was starting to seep into his core, and even though User-senses told him that he was topped off on food for the time being it was hard to suppress the shuddery memory of slowly running out of power.

Sighing, he bowed to necessity and rose from his place crouched among the dubious shelter of some detritus. The door mechanism on the house wasn’t hard to figure out—it was a large, jointed affair similar to the garage door at his Users’ home. A slow circle of the building showed another door, but chances were good the latch mechanism on that was stronger, and he didn’t want to be led into a blind wall—he could tell from peering into the main entrance that there _was_ actually living space beyond. The alarm-sound— _barking_ —resumed when Rinzler approached, and he huffed again to himself as he searched for a manual latch on the door. He would have to take his chances, though if he was judging by the _sound_ at least this potential antagonist wasn’t likely to be as _large_ as some of the pet-creatures he’d seen.

_There_. Near the ground was a manual latch. Rinzler crouched and tested it, tugging gently to see if there was any play at all in the door. The metal groaned a little, the mechanism sliding up a few inches before stopping with a muted shriek. So the latch was set—a small point in Sam_Flynn’s favor not to trust entirely to the obscurity of his location to provide safety. Unfortunately for Sam’s security precautions, a lot of User locks and latches were not formulated to withstand program strength, and with a low grunt Rinzler pulled until the latch holding the door closed gave way with a shriek of metal and a thunk.

A dark blur raced out of the house, barking, and then skidded to a stop. It was a pet, but not a type that Rinzler had ever seen, easily smaller than _Zap_ and with a strangely squished-in face. It came closer with an interrogative noise, nose twitching visibly even in the low light. It yipped some more, keeping its distance, and after watching it practically dance in circles around him, Rinzler decided it _really_ didn’t merit threat status after all.

Better to let as little rain in as possible, and Rinzler only opened the door enough to slip inside. The pet raced inside after him, just managing to avoid getting trapped on the other side of the door, and then it made a beeline for a box full of blankets and plopped down, watching Rinzler expectantly.

It was not much warmer inside the structure, chill seeping in through the door after him, but it was at least dry. He stripped out of the wet coat, wishing idly for a change of clothes, and searched for a light switch to get a better look at his surroundings. The shelter was much more bare than any of the User dwellings he’d seen previously, much more like a program’s home. There was a vehicle in what looked a little like a repair bay, a few beaten-up chairs and sofa, and a small area for preparing food. A ladder led to the upper level, and a brief investigation showed it was a sleeping area. The sofa looked as though it had also been pressed into service as a sleeping area, with a pile of pillows and blankets stationed on the floor nearby. The home’s bathroom was tiny, barely enough room for what appeared to be the usual equipment and a very small shower. Given his User’s preference for comfort, he could see why Alan-One kept telling Sam to move.

The damp hooded shirt joined the coat on a hook near the door, leaving Rinzler in a thermal under-layer and still-wet jeans. He looked around to see if there were environmental controls anywhere—he had watched Lora and Alan-One have enough small arguments about the thermostat to have an idea how they worked—but couldn’t find anything that resembled what he was familiar with. There also wasn’t a phone line connected to the house, which was going to make contacting Gibbs a problem if Quorra and Sam didn’t return soon.

Rinzler’s exploration took him into the little kitchen, which got the pet’s attention again. It zoomed after him, almost running into his legs, and started hopping and whining as he approached the refrigerator to see if there was a phone nearby. Frowning, he looked down and watched the pet sit and pant at him.

“I don’t have anything for you,” he growled. The pet yipped and danced a few more steps before sitting down with the air of accomplishment. Was it trying to communicate something? It appeared to use different communications cues than the cat.

“Go sit in your box,” Rinzler said. The pet whined at him, following on his heels as he walked back into the main living area, and then stopped dead and exploded into a frenzy of running in circles and barking. Rinzler stared at the display until his hearing caught the sound of a car approaching, and a little later saw the shine of headlights coming in the window. A motor overhead coughed to life, pulling the door he had entered through up and revealing the house’s missing occupants. The pet raced over to Sam, hopping and dancing and barking wildly.

The User didn’t pay any attention to the display, surveying the house with a frown. Quorra was faster to notice the change, and with a low squeal she threw herself at him. Rinzler managed to catch her without aggravating his shoulder, feeling his breath catch as she hugged him tightly.

“Where _were_ you? We were looking _all day_ today and yesterday, and when we got the call from _Ed_ that you _disappeared_ …”

“Around,” Rinzler said quietly.

“What happened?” Sam was still frowning, the trace of panicky energy that normally characterized him gone. He had picked up the pet, who was wriggling in delight as it stared adoringly at the User. Rinzler swallowed. Quorra’s arms suddenly seemed like a trap, her own curious expression no help.

“I—“ he started, stopped. Took a moment to push away the desire to curl in on himself and _hide_. “I am not going back.” It was a small act of will to meet Sam’s gaze. “I will not be recoded again. By _anyone_.”

“So what? You just decide to break into my place?” Sam still spoke too-evenly, and it was impossible _not_ to make the comparison to Clu, before one of the administrator’s unpredictable bursts of temper.

“ _Sam_ ,” Quorra said, turning a glare on him.

“Dr. Gibbs said you would be an ally. If he was wrong, I will go,” Rinzler said, trying to keep breath even. It was hard, a knot of anger and fear tight in his core, the origin not completely certain. Maybe something else trapped in his shattered memory, like so much else lately.

“You ran into _Gibbs_?” Sam said, and the sternness was broken by an incredulous look. Rinzler found he could breathe easily again.

“He implied he was not satisfied with his normal accommodation. It seemed like a good idea to stay together,” Rinzler said, a little stiffly. Quorra looked between them.

“Who’s Dr. Gibbs?”

“The guy who invented the laser—the Portal—with Lora,” Sam said, shaking his head slowly. “He was Encom’s founder… he was at the press thing last week, but you weren’t there, right. _Shit_.”

“Is that a problem?” Rinzler said, as Quorra finally let him go and started rummaging around the kitchen.

“No. Yes. I don’t know. What really happened? All I got out of Alan was that he took you into the system and you freaked out, and then Tron picked a fight and you all took off running.” Sam put the pet down, eyeing Rinzler up and down before nodding to himself and taking off his own wet coat.

“Alan-One was not pleased with my progress. He implied I was malfunctioning and insisted on seeing my code,” Rinzler said, a faint growl in the words. “Lora did not agree with his assessment.” He crossed his arms, partially to hold in what body heat he could—the open door let in the chill—and partially to hide the faint tremor the recall brought.

“Marv, come eat something,” Quorra called, and the pet abandoned its study of Sam to run over to the former ISO. She rejoined them, hit a button on the wall that made the door start a clunking slide closed. “He had security keeping you quarantined? Why?”

“I don’t know,” Rinzler said, eyeing her as she placed her own rain gear with the rest. They were all damp, it seemed. “Perhaps he planned edits. _Said_ he just wanted to _look_.”

“Shit, Alan,” Sam said, running both hands through his hair and tugging for a moment. “All right. _Okay_. This is too heavy and it’s too late at night to figure out what the hell. I’ll call Alan and let him know you’re here—“

“I am _not_ going back!” Rinzler snarled, backing away. Of course the Users would take each other’s’ side, of course, what else could he expect? _Flynn_ hadn’t cared enough, not about the system or any of them individually for _Rinzler_ to expect—

The pet—Marv?—ran up to Rinzler, barking and wriggling at him in what might have passed for a threat display, and he almost tripped on the creature in his haste to get away. Sam crossed the handful of steps between them, grabbing Rinzler’s wrist while he compensated for the loss of balance.

“You’re not,” Sam said, hanging on tightly despite the fact that Rinzler was still in good enough shape to _break_ the hand on his arm. “Stay here tonight, fine, we’ll figure it out in the morning. I just don’t want Alan running around the city all night. He might have been an asshole, but he’s worried about you.”

“Why?” Rinzler said, looking down, wishing he could recall the question the moment he said it. He had _tried_ , glitch and delete it. He made no demands, he performed his tasks as best he could… what missing variable _was_ there? And _why_ was his User worried _now_ when he had been so close to rewriting him a day previous?

And what answer could the son of Flynn have for him anyway?

“Alan is… not always the best at talking to people,” Sam said after a moment. Rinzler peered up at him, Sam’s gaze on the hand still clutching the former program’s wrist. “All right, more like ‘we’re gonna do things my way and I’m not going to tell you what’s up’ half the time. _Double_ when he’s had time to worry about stuff and thinks he has an answer to a problem. Dunno what he expected here… I used to run away all the time for less, and I wasn’t stuck worrying about him poking around my brain on a plate.

“So he stuck his foot in it. Scared the shit out of _you_ , and if _Tron_ was in the mix… Yeah, he’s got a reputation around Encom for only listening to Alan. I can imagine he bugged right the fuck out if you even so much as raised your voice. Am I warm?”

Rinzler swallowed, feeling the rapid beat of his heart start to slow again, and nodded. That was not a _bad_ way to assess the situation.

“And Gibbs knew that I’d fight Alan about it if it came to it, sneaky bastard,” Sam finished, letting Rinzler go. “So let’s summarize—you’re gonna stay the night, because hell if I’m chasing you across half the city. It’s almost midnight, and I’m cold and wet. I’m gonna call Alan and get the search called off because he’s probably a ball of stress and caffeine, and then I’m gonna call Lora too so she doesn’t worry and she can tranq her husband. And then when the fucking _sun_ is up again, we are going to have a house meeting and figure out what the fuck. Okay? Nobody is going to get rewritten, nobody is going to be out on the street tonight, and I am going to get the fireplace going because _shit_ I forgot why I don’t stay here past October now.”

Sam stomped off to suit action to words, muttering over a bright orange object that Rinzler hadn’t been able to figure out in his earlier survey. Quorra appeared at his elbow, smiling fondly at Sam before she looked Rinzler up and down herself.

“I think that means you’re a rescue now,” she whispered, volume loud enough for Sam to pick up. He flailed a moment in her general direction, and judging from the giggle he got from the ISO, a rude gesture was involved somehow.

“Rescue from what?” Rinzler rumbled, following Quorra back toward the kitchen area. She had plugged in a kettle, and it was hissing along. The pet followed and parked itself next to its bowl, watching everything with a pleased expression.

“I’m not sure yet,” Quorra said, shrugging easily. She made them all tea, and somehow Sam conjured fire in the orange object, and the dwelling actually started to warm up. The tea was the sharp-smelling kind that Rinzler favored, and while it was cooling enough to drink Sam dragged him up the ladder to inspect the cache of clothes to see if anything was fit to replace wet jeans. They were nearly the same height and build, but Rinzler suspected Sam settled on a rather loud plaid pattern less because it fit and more because it looked a little silly. It was warm. He’d take the assault on his dignity.

He had to borrow Quorra’s phone to contact Gibbs, though the old User refrained from any admonitions about keeping him up late after all.

Quorra, it turned out, had been given the sleeping loft. Once they were all changed and had taken turns through the small bathroom, more blankets had to be procured from storage to make a third place, built from a few sleeping bags and given the place in front of the fire.

“I’m getting the couch,” Sam said quietly, as he placed a last armful of blankets in the small nest he’d constructed. “Toll for breaking the lock on the door.”

Rinzler shrugged, and snagged Sam’s forgotten mug to rinse them both out at the sink. The User blinked after him, then flicked out the last of the lights and disappeared into the pile of blankets left on the couch. It took a little work to assemble the pile of bedding into something comfortable with only the flickering illumination from the fire, and there was still a pervasive chill that seeped out of the flooring, but it was a marked improvement over the previous night. Rinzler sighed, mimicking Sam and burrowing into the bedding.

“Goodnight,” Sam said after a few quiet moments, catching Rinzler from a half-doze. The pet had found the edge of the blanket-pile and was turning in small, snuffling circles before it, too, settled in front of the fire. Sam watched them from his place on the couch, a half-smirk just visible in the low light, and then turned away, presumably to sleep. The fire snapped and popped, the sounds of rain and boats signaling one another in the distance more obvious as the dwelling itself quieted.

He had until morning, at least.

“Goodnight,” Rinzler replied softly, before he finally let sleep take him. 


	18. Coda: Shots Fired

“Hey Q.. Alone time, huh?” Sam said, as soon as he heard the water from their teeny bathroom start up. Quorra, who was digging curiously through a few boxes rescued from the big storage closet, looked up and nodded once she met Sam’s gaze, going back to her exploration of his stash of camping gear.

That done, he stopped for his raincoat and slipped back outside, debating whether or not to burn the gas and run the heat as he climbed back into the clammy coldness of the jeep. Thank goodness they’d planned for this after the first couple times they managed to trip over each other… Two was a bit too many for the hideout long-term. _Three_ was going to be a comedy of errors until he could think of another place to go. Maybe the house? It had enough room for three…

No. _Shit_. Bad. Sam sighed, letting his head thunk forward into the wheel for a moment before jamming the keys into the ignition. He wasn’t going to have this argument while freezing, thanks. It was going to be bad enough making sure that Alan didn’t charge right over, let alone leave them be for a few days. And Rinzler… Yes, the program had broken into his place, but he’d had _that look_ on him, that gnaw-my-leg-off look that Sam recognized from _himself_ that first and only year at Caltech. It was going to blow over, Alan wasn’t _totally_ oblivious, but it was probably going to be a few days until the two were talking to each other again. He could give Rinzler a few days—but screw Gibbs for putting the idea in Rinzler’s head that Sam would be an ally, because while the weird thing with Rinzler and Quorra was its own animal that Sam tried to stay _far_ away from, Rinzler himself was like a Pandora’s Box of _no_.

 _Normal_ people weren’t built to deal with having their _fictional_ childhood hero turn out to be real and then also try to kill you and _then_ turn up out of nowhere still half-brainwashed and actually kind of… and it was time to drop that thought _right there_.

None of that was going to get the phone call made, and Sam chewed on his cheek, half-tempted to just let it go. Alan could keep, and he’d likely call _himself_ before the ass-crack of dawn and Sam could tell him then… but then there’d be an even _more_ sleep-deprived and crabby Bradley to deal with, and he just couldn’t quite bring himself to play the asshole card just yet. He punched the requisite commands into the phone without looking, before he could change his mind about the whole thing, and shoved his Bluetooth into his ear. The phone sitting beside him meant the phone wasn’t likely to go on a flight.

Alan picked up after the second ring. “What’s wrong? I thought you and Quorra were turning in for the night?” There was engine noise in the background of the call—nope, Alan hadn’t turned home like he said he would.

“I thought you were turning in for the night,” Sam said, mentally moving ‘call Lora’ ahead of ‘berate Gibbs’ on his list of phone calls to make.

“I’m on my way.. had to take Roy home. What’s wrong, Sam?”

Sam sighed heavily. No use beating around the bush. “You can call off the search. We found him—or he found _us_ , anyway. You might wanna call Dr. Gibbs about it. _We_ are going to get some _sleep_.”

“You did? I’ll be there in a bit, just hang on—“

“About that. I’d rather you didn’t,” Sam said. Shots fired—this was either going to go fine or very, very poorly from here.

“Don’t be silly. I’ll pick Rinzler up and take him home so you don’t have to worry about Quorra’s safety. Is that why you’re in the car?”

“I’m in the car because it’s kinda hard to have a private conversation otherwise,” Sam said, “And Q’s a big girl. She’s fine. Go home, Alan. We can talk about it in the morning.”

“Look, I’m not far from the loop, I’ll cut over.”

“Alan… I know you don’t want to hear this, but _go home_. Rinzler… he’s not ready to deal with you again yet, and he already announced he’s not going back with you. Quorra and I are fine. We’ll be fine in the morning.”

“What are you.. Rinzler said _what_?” And there was the edge in Alan’s voice that Sam had been dreading, mingled disbelief and temper. He’d swear if he didn’t know that the piece in his ear would pick it up.

“Rinzler was here when we got in,” Sam said. The whole chain of events might work. “He ran into Dr. Gibbs sometime today—you’ll have to ask _him_ what went down, but Gibbs invited Rinzler over for me. I guess he didn’t want to wait outside or something. Q and I got home, and there he was. He’s all right—looks like he got a little bloody in that fight with Tron, but I didn’t see anything fresh. We’re gonna hammer out what the _hell_ in the morning, but Alan… Look he was ready to take off again when I said I was going to _call_ you, and he seriously did say he wasn’t going back right now. _Don’t_ come over, ok? I know you didn’t mean to, but he thinks you were going to edit him. Something about you not liking his progress.”

“Just how did you—? Sam, we both know that Rinzler barely _talks_. He’s not ready to be on his own yet,” Alan said, a tremor in his voice. Sam couldn’t quite focus on it, his own thoughts racing ahead because _yeah_ , Alan had complained about it before but then Rinzler had started running around with Quorra and—

“Shitfuck,” Sam breathed, the bits clicking together neatly. Head met steering wheel again. “Aw, _hell_. Fucking _Clu,_ of course.”

Clu had reprogrammed Tron into Rinzler and tried to get everyone to think he was some kinda replacement for his father. Rinzler was a silent ninja assassin who probably _had_ to buy into that thanks to the head-fuck. Alan was Tron’s User, and if half the stuff that had come from his father’s garbled stories and the glimpses he’d gotten of the programs in the Grid was an indication... And Alan was _Rinzler’s_ User by extension. Clu was also a _complete fucking psychopath_. A complete psychopath who had been User-replacement in the Grid, and then _Alan_ comes along…

“Sam—“

“Alan,” Sam said, muffled a bit because he did not want to look into his place right now. “Please _please_ trust me and just go home?”

How the _hell_ was he going to try and explain this and not have Alan go off on him?

“Not until you tell me what’s going on. What happened? Are you all right?”

“You remember when I was sixteen and got that community service sentence?”

“What does that have to—“

“And they had me at Mayfair House? What did the judge say… if I was going to bleat about my terrible childhood, I should have some perspective? _Yeah_ ,” Sam said, breathing out again. “Look. It’s _not your fault_ , but I think you just managed to step in about a thousand years of fucked-up. Rinzler is _way_ more functional out here than you think he is. More than Tron, even, since he started getting twitchy so fast yesterday. And he _does_ talk. It’s just… there’s this _thing_ that people do sometimes, if they’ve been stuck in an abusive situation. It’s called overcompliance, where you try to be absolutely perfect so the abuser doesn’t flip out on you. Trying not to make yourself a target… And, well, it looks a lot like Rinzler at your place, sometimes. It’s _not_ your fault—it’s Clu’s for being a fucking sack of dicks—but… But I promised Rinzler he wasn’t going to have to go back to your place, and I _have_ to keep my promise. Okay?”

It was like one of those optical illusions, impossible _not_ to see once you made the mental leap. The sharp silence after Alan appeared when Rinzler had found them at the convenience store… the way Rinzler had _flinched_ so hard when they found him at the hideout and avoided eye contact with them until that desperate outburst. The only time he had seemed actually _relaxed_ was at the bookstore, and _then_ Sam had been outnumbered.

 _I think you’re a rescue now_ , Quorra had said.

Why was that fast becoming the story of his life?

“I don’t want to fight about it,” Sam said quietly into the silence that followed all that. It stretched on and on, and Sam winced to himself once Alan finally spoke again.

“You think we… we might have hurt him?” Alan said, and Sam winced again at how small he sounded.

“ _No_. It’s just… Rinzler knows that _I’m_ pretty fucking pathetic, you know? I’m the opposite of scary. He can take me down in less than a minute, and that’s _after_ fucking around a bit first. You… I don’t know. Users seem to be somewhere between parents and God half the time, and with the way _Tron_ acted when you brought him out… well, I think Rinzler was trying to make you happy the only way he knew how, that’s all. _Me_ he doesn’t worry about. Just give him some time to get on his feet, all right?”

“All right,” Alan said, after another long silence.

“Thanks, Alan.”

“Call me in the morning,” Alan added hastily, “And try to check on that injury. And keep an eye on him, sometimes he has nightmares. We’ll… I’ll… We’ll get his things together. Bring them over tomorrow somehow.”

“I will. Promise. Thanks.”

“I’m counting on you.”

“I know. Get some sleep already,” Sam said.

The call clicked out after the usual goodbye and about three more admonitions to keep a close eye on Rinzler. Sam stretched, wincing a little at the tension that had settled in his shoulders, and peered into the window-door on the house. Rinzler wasn’t out of the shower yet—figured that he’d be the type to murder the hot water—and Quorra seemed to have extracted every blanket Sam _owned_ from storage and was busy puzzling over the silver emergency blanket.

At least Sam could breathe again, the worst over, and he leaned back in the seat.

The house. He could check on the house in the morning. Call the rental agency, see if it was under lease or not. He had the key to the storage with all the old furniture and shit somewhere, they could dig through it later.

If he was going to be doomed, he might as well be comfortable.


	19. Coda: Fragments

Watery light and short sleep made the world gray around the edges, puled at the small scraps of color in the meager pile of belongings gathered on the bed. It was strange, seeing the sum total of two months—was it really only two months?—gathered like this. Alan would have sworn there was more. A small stack of clothes, practical, unadorned, almost universally grayscale. Some of Lora’s gardening books. A quilt, faded with age, fetched from storage after that maybe ill-advised shopping trip. It barely filled a single duffel bag.

Zap, too, seemed to have picked up the somber nature of the morning. He was normally one for climbing into bags until shut out of the room, but this time he switched his attention to something under the bed after only one jump into the bag.

Alan sighed, straightening the folds of the quilt as he laid it carefully on top of the bag’s contents. Lora would be waiting to run it over to Sam’s. _Lora_ because _he’d_ fucked things up so badly.

Arms slid around his waist, and a familiar form pressed warm against his back.

“He’s all right,” Lora said, a little muffled by her face pressed between his shoulder blades.

“He’s not all right. I chased him across the city _and_ half of Encom’s server, and for _what_?” Alan held the strap of the bag, almost belatedly noticing his fingers were starting to ache with how hard he was clenching his fists.

“Sam’s got him. He’ll be fine,” Lora soothed.

“ _Sam_ won’t let me see him.”

Maybe it was the wrong thing to say. Lora swatted him upside the head, using the moment’s distraction to steal the bag. Alan sighed, slumping. Maybe they were all right, and he should shut up and go away for a while.

Under the bed, there was a chirp and a sharp thump.

“Is that Zap?” Lora said, the bag’s strap already hitched on her shoulder. Well, there wasn’t any point in her hanging around.

“It’s his favorite place since—“ Alan said, the words choking off on a fresh lump of uselessness. _Since Rinzler moved in_ hung in the air between them, and with a soft smile Lora patted his arm.

“You sure you don’t want to get breakfast? Stop off at Roy’s?”

Her sympathy ached.

“No… better not make Sam wait too much longer.”

She nodded, understanding sharp in her gaze. That made _one_ of them. Lora pressed a kiss on him and was gone without another word.

Under the bed, Zap chirped again.

The creak and pop of his knees—result of too much driving and not enough sleep, and damn if he should be old enough to _know better_ —covered the sound of the garage door. The reflection-shine of the cat’s eyes greeted him, and Zap added a querulous meow when Alan lunged for him and missed.

“I don’t need your shit today, Zap,” Alan muttered, leaning in to make another try. Instead of scooting back, Zap reared up and promptly disappeared into a fresh hole in the bottom of the box spring. Another thud, and a box tumbled out amid the more familiar sound of the cat taking out his irritation on the mattress frame.

Alan stared at the box. Zap reappeared, oozing out of the hole, and proceeded to roll over it with the exact drooling look of bliss Alan associated with catnip.

It took a couple tries to extract the box, hampered as he was by the bad angle and the cat. Zap had a bad habit of climbing into the box spring, but last Alan checked he didn’t have the thumbs needed to hide something. Which left only one candidate.

For a long while, Alan just sat, the unassuming box—a cookie tin, the kind that collected odds and ends so often it was a surprise to find actual treats inside—balanced on his knees. Where had he _gotten_ it? What had been so important that Rinzler felt the need to hide it? Opening it would be yet another violation of trust.. but Alan couldn’t shake the itchy certainty that _here_ was a key to understanding his lost and silent program.

Another moment’s delay. Off came the lid. The only witness was too busy drooling over what turned out to be fragments of catnip to care. Dried out sprigs of the herb from the garden were on top, pale blue flowers still mostly intact despite the way the stems crackled. Alan set those side, safe on the bedside table out of reach.

Underneath were maps, transit routes and schedules mostly, and a neatly folded set of directions from Sam’s place—or rather, the lot nearby—and the aquarium. It explained a little about his daring escape, his familiarity with the transit system that let him evade their searching. Had Rinzler made the trip? Had he taken _Quorra_ with him?

Alan took the time to re-fold the maps, the creases sharp and certain, before he looked any further. The box was organized, precise sections arranged so nothing shifted, and he winced a little as he disturbed the order of it all, knowing he couldn’t put it back the same way but unable to resist. A ticket stub to _Despicable Me_ from the discount theater. A pair of sunglasses, the lenses shaped like hearts and the frames made of cheap rainbow plastic. Flowers from the botanical garden, pressed carefully between the pages of a copy of _The Forever War_ —the exact, dilapidated paperback that he thought he’d lost—which occupied most of the space. A handful of Lora’s chocolates. Folded sachets of tea from the fussy tea shop she liked best, rich and dark and spiced. And tucked into the odd corners, the pens that had been mislaid.

Numbly, Alan fitted everything back as best he could, chewing his lip at the rumpled corner of the novel’s cover, the slightly squashed tea. Settled the papers on top, though they didn’t lie as well. The catnip springs nearly broke in half. And the lid, though that, at least, popped into place without opposition, hiding the damage.

More damage, and his fault again.

The metal of the tin was warm from body heat as he held it, caught between standing and staying there on the floor, breath caught in a sudden yawning grief that he hadn’t felt since... well, since just before Kevin had been declared dead _in absentia_. He hadn’t given into it then, though Lora had prodded him more than once, because there was Sam and the company and the press practically salivating to see him break down.

Alan’s breath caught again, a more certain sob this time, and he clutched the box as he felt tears spill from his closed eyes.


	20. 1100

Rinzler felt his processes skip at the vicious kick, the baton sliding through fingers gone unresponsive. The weightlessness of free-fall was no longer a comfort, time to move, as another kick sent the world spinning in a sickening blur of gold and black. He couldn’t feel the baton.

_No!_

The Sea rushed up, restless black seeming to _reach_ for him as he fell closer, the roar almost, _almost_ enough to drown the sound of a lightjet rezzing and speeding away.

_Wake up!_

He could see for a frozen instant every shifting pixel, the surface fracturing and reforming, a hungry empty maw, and it was going to _hurt_ when he hit—

Rinzler _gasped_ , throwing tangled blankets aside as he surfaced from the fragments of memory. The ground was solid and chill beneath him, embers casting a soothing orange glow around Sam Flynn’s small dwelling. He was in the User world. The Sea of Simulation was _behind_ him—the faint lapping of water he could hear was the _User_ harbor.

With a shaky breath he sat up. The rain was stopped for the time being. He did not trust what else might surface from memory if he tried to sleep again.

Letting his fingers skim through the blankets, Rinzler checked to make sure he hadn’t inadvertently struck Marvin. The dog had made a habit of pawing him when his dreams turned toward bad simulations. Rinzler frowned—there was no familiar warm wriggle trying to press into his side. _Had_ he..?

A faint snuffle from the couch. He could just make out Marv pawing urgently at Sam’s arm. The User’s face was pale in the gloom, brows scrunched in distress. One arm half-raised in a warding-off gesture before drifting down again. Sam moaned lowly. Marv used the moment to dart in and start licking Sam’s face, and Rinzler turned away to let the User wake up without an audience, resting his elbows on drawn-up knees and sighing as his own heart rate started to slow from the uncomfortable race the dream had provoked.

Sam muttered something unintelligible, and Rinzler turned back to watch him sit up and attempt to keep the dog from licking him more. He ran a hand through mussed hair, making it stick up further, and for long moments didn’t seem to see anything at all.

“You, too,” Rinzler said, softly so Quorra wouldn’t be awakened as well. It was not a question.

“What are you, my psychic friend?” Sam said, groaning before he tossed Marv gently back to the floor. The little dog huffed and trotted to Rinzler, settling in his lap.

“We are allies… define the qualifier,” Rinzler said, absently scratching Marv behind the ears. The familiar gesture helped calm the strangeness of seeing _Sam_ showing the same remnants of nightmare.

“Smartass,” Sam managed, looking discomfited at Rinzler’s statement. Rinzler shrugged in answer to the User’s sour look.

“Ugh, what time’s it?” Sam said, breaking eye contact first. It was a rhetorical question—the User dug between the cushions for his phone even as he spoke. Sam made another irritated noise at whatever the screen’s glow showed him and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. Rinzler already knew _he_ wasn’t sleeping any more, so the time didn’t matter.

“Fuck,” Sam muttered, making an abortive attempt to smooth down his hair before he rose and stumbled toward the kitchen. Rinzler felt Marv squirm and helped the dog out of the tangle of blanket to toddle after his master. After a few more moments, Rinzler followed, curious at the faint clatter of Sam doing _something_ in the dark. The blue light of the electric kettle was on, and Sam was feeling around the collection of mugs on the shelf. Rinzler plucked the box of tea from its hiding place—he had the better night vision—and pressed it into Sam’s seeking hand without needing to be asked.

“Four AM.. why did it have to be four?” Sam said, more rhetorical nonsense as he started looking in the cabinets. Rinzler ended up stationed by the kettle, watching him select a thermos and a couple of metal mugs by touch. He didn’t stand uselessly—before the kettle could whistle, Rinzler took it off the heating element. Sam grunted an appreciative note, adding water and a few tea bags to the thermos. Once the chore was done, he sighed and eyed Rinzler.

“Come on. Misery loves company,” Sam said, motioning for Rinzler to follow. Curious, he let Sam lead him outside to a ladder half-hidden by the exterior storage unit. The rungs were slippery with the rain, but the distant lights of the city and the single bulb that stood nightly vigil over the former shipping yard were plenty to see by.

The roof was almost a living space of its own, a small table and a few folded-up chairs hinting at its occasional purpose as a gathering place. Rather than bother with the furniture, Sam simply headed to the edge nearest the water, facing east, and sat. After a moment spent examining the space, Rinzler joined him. Encom tower was easy to see, the blue-white logo casting distorted reflections on the water. Sam was facing it as well, frowning a little as he fidgeted with a mug. The other one sat next to the thermos, but Rinzler didn’t pick it up, waiting out whatever ritual he had stumbled upon.

“It’s funny,” Sam said after a while spent silently observing the water and the thin boat traffic. “This is usually the part where I get to dodge questions.”

“If you do not want to tell me, what is the point of asking?” Rinzler said, cocking his head to the side a little at Sam’s smothered laugh.

“And you’re the last person who’d ask.”

“I can extrapolate enough,” Rinzler said, favoring Sam with a shrug at the suspicious glance. The User shook his head.

“I’m not the guy who tries to chew his hand off every other night,” Sam said, almost grinning when Rinzler reached to cuff him for the presumption. It was the grin that stopped him, and he pointedly rested his hand on the cold metal of the roof instead. The bite had faded to a few traces of greenish-yellow discoloration long ago, User self-repair apparently quite functional for him as well.

“It was _once_.”

“I get it,” Sam said. He kicked his feet a little, looking at them meditatively. “It’s a bitch sometimes when your subconscious wants to latch onto shit that didn’t even happen. That’s all.”

“ _Clu_.”

“Yeah.”

Rinzler looked down at the fingers splayed across the metal, saw the faint smudge where the worst of the bite had yet to completely fade. “You, too.”

He said it softly, and for long moments wondered if Sam had even heard him.

“They always try, you know,” Sam said, fidgeting with his empty mug. “When I was a kid, Lora used to say that if you talked about your dreams, they wouldn’t have power over you. ‘cept that was a lie, since I was always having nightmares about crap that _happened_ , you know? I wish I had made-up stuff like monsters under the bed to deal with. They _tell_ kids how to deal with that. Not how to deal with everyone disappearing on you… or paparazzi taking pictures of you with a telephoto lens when you thought you were _alone_ … or people looking at you and seeing someone _else_.”

Maybe it had been a more intimate disclosure than Sam meant. He scowled into the middle distance, hunching tight, defensive. Maybe they were _all_ lost, fate leaving Sam among the last ones standing as well. For a long moment, Rinzler wished uselessly that Quorra was awake. She was better at finding words than either of them, more adept at walking the lines between.

“Lora is usually right,” Rinzler said, finally, into the long pause that followed Sam’s statement.

“ _He_ doesn’t take me to the lightcycle arena,” Sam said, breath a shivery sigh. “Doesn’t tell me that he _isn’t_ Dad until it’s too late… and I’m on the ship when the Portal closes. He starts to freak out, disks that one guy.. Jarvis? But then he turns to me and he says… he says that since Dad didn’t _care_ enough about me to save me, I was _all his_.”

Rinzler felt the soft edge of Sam’s sleeve, felt the small bumps where the cold made the User’s hair stand on end. When he had reached, he didn’t know, but he let the first two fingers of his hand, bare as they were, trace the memory of the line of light that once ran from the User’s elbow to thumb. There was no connection—it was foolish to think one would form—but something of Sam’s tension unwound, as if the silent pulse of _commiseration_ passed through the touch anyway. Sam laughed breathlessly, the sound breaking high, before he fumbled for the thermos and poured two mugs, sliding one to Rinzler before taking the other in both hands like a lifeline. Rinzler picked it up, letting the heat seep through to chilled fingertips.

“Hell of a nightmare,” Sam said after taking a sip that looked like it scalded. Rinzler nodded, watching his breath form ripples in the surface of the hot liquid.

“It was the Sea,” Rinzler said after a more cautious taste of his own tea. It tasted of greenery, something vegetal and edged with mint, soothing with more than just simple warmth. Sam’s eyes were fixed on him, he could see that much from the corners of his eyes. “Memory recall. The fall. I didn’t sink this time.”

“Shit,” Sam said. It sounded almost reverent, and Rinzler snorted at his tone.

“Should have expected it,” he said, shaking his head and taking another slow sip of the tea.

They fell into silence after that, the lapping of water and the distant sound of horns echoing over the harbor filling up the space that would have been made awkward by words. In slow measures, the tea disappeared and the sky began to lighten, fog rolling in and making the world into milky shades of blue and purple. It was comfortable, the silence. Perhaps because this ritual _felt_ like it was meant to be solitary, there was no pressure to speak. Not beyond the words already exchanged, anyway.

“’s funny,” Sam said, setting his mug aside as he stretched, the light in the sky turning the world into the ghost of the Encom server. “You were my hero, when I was a kid.”

Rinzler _tsked_ faintly, swirling the grown-bitter dregs of tea. He should have expected that, too, eventually.

“ _Tron_ derezzed— _died_ —in a backchannel a thousand cycles ago,” he said, wondering a moment at the sharp edge in his tone when all he felt was weary. “I am _not Tron_.”

“Hey—“ Sam said, and the User’s reflexes weren’t bad, to have caught the rim of the cup before Rinzler could push himself to his feet.

“Look I didn’t…” Sam started, then made a face and started again. “I like _you_ better.”

Rinzler eyed Sam sideways.

“I’m not good at this talking about feelings stuff, ok?” Sam said, mussing his hair back into spikes in his embarrassed distress. “I meant… Look, I _met_ Tron, ok? It was like _Alan_ in stereo. And you _were_ my hero, all right? I have an action figure somewhere to prove it. It’s just… it’s one thing hearing stories and another having somebody make sure you don’t _die_.

“Don’t get me wrong, ok? You still freak me out. That ninja thing? You gotta stop that before one of us gets hurt. I mean it. It’s probably gonna be _me_ that ends up poking his eye out or something. But… But you didn’t owe us anything, back there. I mean it was _nice_ what with you _not_ killing me when you could have. Uh. _Twice_. But… you definitely didn’t have to hit Clu like that. So… So I guess I’m trying to say thanks. Thanks for saving our butts back there. And that’s me thanking _you_ , ok? Because last time I checked _Tron_ was back in Encom being an asshole to Ed at the time.

“Besides… I don’t think Tron would understand. But you get it.”

Smiling was still a strange thing, an unfamiliar configuration of his face that left Rinzler mildly bemused. He didn’t fight it, though, when he felt the corners of his mouth tip upward. It seemed the correct choice when Sam echoed it after a moment, a little more lopsided, perhaps.

“You hungry?” Sam said, as the sun finally crested the towers of the city and the fog washed gold, all at once.


	21. 1/1/2011

_[rlogin EncomDragon]_

Rinzler snorted as the system perched on the counter beeped accusingly at the command, _access denied_ flashing across the screen. The denial was signed _JA307020_ —and it was no particular shock to hear Ed mutter what was likely a User curse behind him and nudge him out of the way, some other peripheral resting forgotten on the counter. Rinzler stepped back quickly enough, leaving Ed to tap the keys and mutter direly about system wipes.

He did not think that the User was serious, if only because it seemed like a great deal of Ed’s runtime was tied in up trying to win his private battle of wits with Tron.

“Fucking… how the fuck is this thing _spreading_? I thought the service pack would nix the fucking worm…” Ed said, flicking the screen in irritation as Tron denied his remote access request again. Rinzler turned away—favor or not, entering system commands still made him uneasy despite Sam and Ed both trying to cajole him into it. A User’s power was not what he needed, and Quorra seemed comfortable enough with the role for both of them.

“I keep telling you we need a better connection,” Quorra announced, stepping through the small kitchen in this, Sam’s primary dwelling. She had a shovel resting on one shoulder jauntily. Sam, who had been nursing a headache at the table—the User world had advanced a cycle, though why that involved imbibing large amounts of intoxicants was a bit beyond Rinzler—looked up suspiciously.

“I’ll be just a moment!” Quorra said, grinning sunnily.  She passed into the small yard, Marvin chasing her heels. Sam shook his head and moved it back to its place on the table, but then shot upright with a wild-eyed look.

“Shovel!” he breathed, staggering to his feet. “Shit shit _shit_ I knew it was bad news when she called the utility!”

Sam was gone with no further explanation, squabbling erupting loudly but indistinctly soon after. Ed shut the laptop and groaned, rubbing his eyes, and then followed to peevishly snap at them both about _pirates_ and _fiber_ _cables_.

Alone on the kitchen table, Sam’s phone began to ring. With no one else to take the call, Rinzler picked it up without thinking about it—gently and firmly denying that Sam was available for interviews or meetings had started not long after they had left behind the small dwelling by the water, when Sam had started coming back tired and thin and looking _far_ too much like memory files that he and Quorra had _no_ interest in re-running. He tucked the phone between his cheek and shoulder, the rote denial on his lips, but was interrupted by a familiar voice.

“Sam! Will it be all right to drop by the house later? I have no idea what to do with the terrarium Rinzler gave Lora, and she’s in Washington for the next week. How is he, anyway? I saw that story about him carrying that photographer... he didn’t get hurt, did he? You don’t have to keep talking around it, I’m not going to charge out there. Much.”

Rinzler smiled faintly, just listening to the flow of words as he crossed the kitchen to put together a pot of tea. The argument over the shovel outside seemed to be winding down, or at least lowering in volume.

“Sam? You there?” The words trailed off uncertainly, and Rinzler paused, too. He could, if he wanted, end the call and refuse to acknowledge it. Leave Sam and Quorra and Lora to continue their cheerful wall around him, their insistence that _he_ was the one to initiate contact.

He remembered that once, long ago, he would have cheerfully _derezzed_ for a chance to actually initiate contact.

Of course, his runtime was full of ironies. He could waste another thousand cycles trying to catalog them all.

“I guess Marv got your phone again…”

Rinzler set the kettle on the burner, frowning slightly, and sighed.

“Alan-One,” he said, leaning back against the counter. “What did you do to the plants?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's about damn time these guys got a happy ending.


End file.
